Ohio Valley Bank Partners with Swaystack to Gamify Onboarding & Deliver Personalized Recommendations In Digital Banking

Swaystack today announced a partnership with Ohio Valley Bank ($1.5 billion assets) to bring gamified onboarding to the bank’s digital banking customers. Ohio Valley Bank, established in 1872 and headquartered in Gallipolis, Ohio, is one of the six oldest state-chartered banks in the state and operates 18 offices across Ohio and West Virginia. The bank has deployed Swaystack within Jack Henry’s Banno platform to guide new customers through account activation, direct deposit switching, and subscription transfers. For onboarded customers, Swaystack makes personalized product recommendations and then seamlessly and securely directs the customer into the bank’s point of sale platform so that they may take immediate action on those recommendations without unnecessary hurdles.

Ohio Valley Bank was seeing a pattern familiar to community banks across the country. Customers were opening accounts but never making them operational. Their paychecks were still being deposited at their previous institution. Their Netflix, auto insurance, and electric bill were still being charged to an old debit card. Those recurring payments kept the prior relationship in place, and until they moved, the new account sat unused. The bank recognized that activation means more than funding. It means moving the everyday financial routine that keeps a customer tied elsewhere.

“In our branches, when someone walks in for a car loan, our team knows to ask about a savings account for their kid or a better rate on their mortgage. That happens naturally every day,” said Bryna Butler, SVP of Corporate Communications at Ohio Valley Bank. “Online, we had no way to do that. A customer would open an account, and we would go silent. Swaystack gave us a way to bring that same instinct into digital banking, get someone active and set up, and then show them what else we can do for them when the moment is right. We have been doing this in person for 153 years. Now we can do it everywhere.”

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Roughly half of customers who leave a bank do so within the first 90 days of opening their account (Banking Customer Retention Statistics, 2025). Among Millennials and Gen Z, that risk is even higher, with over half saying they would switch institutions tomorrow if another one better met their needs (Drive Research, 2025 Banking Consumer Survey). The economics are clear. It costs five times as much to acquire a new customer as to deepen a relationship with an existing one, and the average community bank is losing that math every time an account opens and stalls. The institutions that solve this will not just retain more customers. They will fundamentally change the value of a new account.

“The deposits community banks need to grow are not coming from new markets. They are sitting inside accounts that were opened and never activated,” said Har Rai Khalsa, Co-Founder and CEO of Swaystack. “Every unfunded account, every paycheck that stays at the old institution, every subscription that never transfers is revenue a community bank already earned the right to have. Ohio Valley Bank looked at that and decided to stop leaving it on the table. They are not hoping customers figure it out on their own. They are showing them exactly what to do and when to do it. That is the urgency this industry needs right now.”

Ohio Valley Bank has operated under the same name, in the same community, through recessions, banking crises, and the complete transformation of how people manage their money. What has kept them relevant for 153 years is not nostalgia. It is the willingness to meet customers however they need to be met. This partnership is the latest proof of that.
To learn more about how Swaystack helps banks and credit unions build deeper relationships through gamified onboarding and personalized engagement, visit swaystack.com or schedule a discovery call.

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