PKO BP launches gamified app Kropka nationwide

On June 15th, Kropka, PKO BP’s new gamification app, will officially launch. Users can earn rewards from a prize pool of PLN 3.54m (approximately EUR 830,000) for everyday activities and scanning receipts. The goal? To attract half a million active users by the end of the year and acquire new banking customers in a subtle, non-intrusive way.

The financial sector has never seen an app quite like this. So far, only employees of the PKO Bank Polski Group have had a chance to test it, but on June 15th the solution will be rolled out to a much broader audience. From that day on, anyone interested will be able to download the Kropka app (dot in English) and start collecting points for their activity, cashless transactions, and the regular completion of missions and challenges.

Six months after we first reported on PKO BP’s new initiative – one that extends well beyond the boundaries of traditional banking – the bank is now revealing its plans to us on the eve of the app’s market debut.

Kropka was tested by 3,000 employees

The app was developed by a team led by Wojciech Bolanowski, an experienced executive who helped build mBank’s mobile app and previously headed Inteligo, PKO BP’s digital banking brand. After spending several years in financial institutions across the Middle East, he was responsible, among other things, for implementing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) solutions at VeloBank from 2022 onward. He is currently Head of Mobile Channels at PKO Finat, the company that provides operational and technology services to the PKO BP Group.

“Kropka is based on a business hypothesis that we want to test in the real market. Trials conducted among employees of the PKO Bank Polski Group confirmed that the value proposition is compelling enough to attract significant interest. Especially considering that the pilot involved bankers. As a group, they are generally less inclined to participate in lotteries than the population as a whole,” says Wojciech Bolanowski.

Indeed, more than 3,000 people took part in the pilot – just over 10% of the Group’s workforce of 26,400 employees. Notably, 200 participants managed to collect every available “dot”. This means they not only logged into the app every day. They also scanned three cashless-payment receipts daily, earned points for completing challenges (such as logging in for five consecutive days), and fulfilled missions (for example, identifying the PKO Finat office address where Kropka was developed or answering a question about what a single dot represents in Morse code).

What motivated them? Above all, the grand prize. Employees competed for PLN 20,000 (approximately EUR 4,700), alongside smaller cash prizes, a month-long lease of a premium car and Samsung store vouchers. The more dots a participant collected, the greater their chances of winning.

It is therefore hardly surprising that almost all participants began collecting dots on the very first day of the lottery. Joining later would have meant significantly lower odds of winning.

The group will allocate PLN 3.54m to prizes

This time, the incentive to play will be even greater. Users of the app will have a chance to win PLN 100,000 (approximately EUR 23,500). Such a prize will be awarded in each of the next four seasons. The first of these – the Strawberry Season – will last for two weeks, until the end of June. Subsequent seasons will run for full calendar months. In the final two seasons, October and November, the top prize will increase from PLN 100,000 to PLN 150,000 (approximately EUR 35,300). The final prize draw is scheduled for December 10th.

The steadily increasing value of the top prize is no coincidence. The bank expects the app’s user base to grow with each successive season. As a result, while the total gross prize pool in the first season will amount to PLN 190,300 (approximately EUR 44,800), it is expected to reach as much as PLN 1.01m (approximately EUR 237,600) in November alone. In addition to the grand prize, participants will have the opportunity to win, among other things, an electric bicycle, a month-long lease of a premium car, a PlayStation 5 console, an electric scooter, and gift cards redeemable at Orlen and Bliska fuel stations. The total gross value of all prizes amounts to PLN 3.54m (approximately EUR 832,900).

Mr. Bolanowski is convinced, however, that large prizes alone are not enough – particularly for people who do not believe they stand a realistic chance of winning the jackpot. For that reason, the app will reward users more frequently through instant benefits.

Examples include cash rewards worth several dozen zlotys, cinema tickets for Helios theaters, and additional dots that increase a participant’s chances in the main lottery.

The entire initiative, including the list of prizes, has been submitted to the Ministry of Finance. Formally, the lottery is organized by Grzegrzółka Loterie, an agency that runs similar promotional campaigns for companies such as Stokrotka. The requirement to obtain ministerial approval means that for the duration of the lottery – through the end of November (formally a single lottery divided into six seasons) – PKO Finat and the lottery organizer are not permitted to alter the rules or mechanics of the game.

“We can only introduce additional competitions, but these cannot take the form of games of chance that are subject to regulatory oversight,” explains Wojciech Bolanowski.

The goal: 500,000 users by year-end

What targets has the PKO Finat team set for itself? Initially, relatively modest ones – especially with the summer holiday season approaching. Building a large base of active users may prove more challenging during this period. Mr. Bolanowski explains that the first real test will come immediately after the holidays, in September. If the app reaches its planned user targets, the bank is expected to approve a dedicated marketing budget for the fourth quarter. This would make it possible to raise awareness of the app and highlight the benefits of using it.

“If we meet these targets and launch marketing campaigns, we believe that by the end of the year the app could already have as many as 500,000 users. My long-term, albeit constantly moving, ambition is to reach half the user base of mObywatel – that is, around six million users,” says Wojciech Bolanowski.

The target is worth viewing against the backdrop of the 17 million people in Poland who participate in games of chance. The popularity of lotteries is illustrated, among other things, by the Ministry of Finance’s receipt lottery launched in 2015. Within just 30 days, participants submitted 17 million receipts. Another example is Blikomania, which attracts several hundred thousand registered BLIK users. PKO BP also has its own experience in this field. In 2025, the bank launched a lottery for Visa cardholders, which drew participation from 120,000 customers.

Mr. Bolanowski already has a long list of ideas for expanding the app’s functionality. As he points out, the challenge is to keep the platform simple and intuitive for new users while ensuring that long-term users do not lose interest.

The focus, therefore, is on developing more advanced features – for example, allowing users to create internal leagues that encourage competition, earn badges, or customize the appearance of the app. All these mechanisms are largely inspired by solutions that have long been standard in the world of online gaming.

Kropka will encourage users to open a bank account

While the primary objective for 2026 is to test the business hypothesis, the Group’s ambitions for 2027 are already focused on scaling and monetizing the solution. The bank wants to see how many users will open an account with PKO BP through Kropka. It intends to encourage this in a subtle rather than aggressive manner.

First, cash prizes will be paid into an account held with Poland’s largest bank. Winners who do not already have one will be able to open an account online after downloading IKO, PKO BP’s mobile banking app.

“We already tested this customer journey during the pilot within the Group. Three people who did not previously have an account with PKO BP opened one, which allowed us to meet the criteria for a successful sale and issue an invoice to the bank,” explains Wojciech Bolanowski.

A second method will involve obtaining marketing consents that allow companies within the PKO BP Group to contact users. A third option is the promotion of banking products – the most traditional form of customer acquisition.

Mr. Bolanowski hopes that these measures will enable Kropka to become a customer-acquisition tool for personal current accounts at Poland’s largest bank. He estimates that if the app reaches 500,000 users by year-end, generating 5,000 new accounts would be a respectable result – but not a fully satisfactory one. A conversion rate of around 1% is more typical of online advertising campaigns. He expects Kropka to outperform that benchmark by several percentage points.

“We assume that Kropka’s conversion rate will be higher. After all, we are talking about an app that creates positive emotions and encourages frequent user engagement. It is also being developed by a banking group,” our interviewee emphasizes.

Over time, additional acquisition mechanisms may be introduced. One example would be granting PKO BP account holders two dots instead of one for uploading a receipt. That would create a tangible incentive, giving the bank’s customers a better chance of winning the most valuable prizes.

Before such features can be introduced, however, the platform must first achieve sufficient scale. That is unlikely to happen in 2026.

Long-term goal? Full financial independence

As the platform scales, a second monetization model will emerge. It involves cooperation with external partners who would fund prizes in Kropka’s lotteries and competitions.

“Kropka will be a good place for advertisers looking to build smart partnerships. Together, we will be able to organize sponsored seasons, design additional missions and challenges, provide extra rewards with partners, or offer customers discount coupons for specific outlets,” explains Wojciech Bolanowski.

These are not purely theoretical assumptions. PKO Finat is already expanding the team responsible for developing the app’s commercial side. Our interviewee is under no illusion that in 2027 the platform will already be able to cover all of Kropka’s costs through partnerships alone. However, the ambition is that in the coming years the solution will become financially independent – fully funded through partnerships and customer acquisition.

If successful, this would mean that the experiment launched by PKO Bank Polski ends as a success.

Expert's perspective

An interesting experiment. The challenge: keeping users engaged

Kropka is an intriguing initiative with an experimental character, taking an unconventional approach to customer acquisition – without explicitly telling users they are interacting with a bank. The main challenge will be competing for users’ attention on their smartphone screens. After all, this is yet another app, vying for time against dozens of others. Once the novelty wears off, the system could become repetitive and risk losing user interest unless the range of tasks is continuously refreshed.

At the same time, the bank may be overestimating how many people will actually want to use the solution – especially since even small cash rewards require having a PKO BP account. This raises the question of whether opening such an account will be a sufficiently strong incentive. Today, similar gamification mechanisms are already offered by apps such as InPost or Orlen, making differentiation particularly difficult.

From the bank’s perspective, however, more important acquisition channels will continue to be broader ecosystems, including the key partnership with Allegro. Within the industry, the launch of Kropka will likely be treated as a curiosity, but any success could prompt other banks to rethink more seriously how they acquire customers.

Łukasz Jańczak

Deputy Director, Research Department, Erste Securities

Key Takeaways

1. Successful validation of the hypothesis in the pilot phase: PKO BP has successfully completed internal testing of the Kropka app, which combines banking with gamification. More than 3,000 employees of the capital group took part in the pilot, and 200 of them collected all available points. This means they not only logged into the app daily, but also scanned three cashless payment receipts every day and earned points for participating in dedicated challenges and missions.
2. Substantial incentive budget and lottery seasonality: Starting June 15, the bank will open access to Kropka for all interested users. In total, during the lottery period, it will allocate PLN 3.54m (approximately EUR 830,000) to prizes. Users will be able to win a main prize of PLN 100,000 or PLN 150,000 (around EUR 23,500–35,300), with the prize pool gradually increasing so that in November alone it will exceed PLN 1m (approximately EUR 235,000).
3. Ambitious scale targets and higher conversion expectations: Wojciech Bolanowski of PKO Finat, who oversees the project, assumes the app will reach 500,000 users by the end of the year, with a long-term target of around 6 million. He expects that, thanks to strong user engagement and positive sentiment, the conversion rate of app users into opened bank accounts will exceed the standard 1% seen in online advertising. He also believes the project could eventually become financially self-sustaining through partnerships.