Can a 90-minute game fix Europe's money problem?

To break into a virtual bank vault, you first have to answer questions on payment methods, interest rates, discounts and phishing emails. That is the Financial Escape Room, an online game that students in Belgium, Estonia, Italy and Slovakia played in a randomized trial. Students typically took about 90 minutes. Afterwards the players scored roughly a third of a standard deviation higher on a financial literacy test than students who had not yet played.

The European Commission now calls financial literacy in the EU very low. This post asks whether games can help, using that trial and the wider evidence.

Europe's literacy gap in numbers

In 2023 the European Commission ran its first EU-wide survey of financial literacy, combining knowledge and behavior questions. Only 18% of respondents scored high, 64% scored medium and 18% scored low. In only four member states (the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Slovenia) did more than a quarter of people score high.

Young adults did worst of the age groups: 13% of 18 to 24 year olds scored high, compared with 20% of people over 39. That gap sits awkwardly with the idea that young people pick up money skills from their phones. Education also mattered, with 26% of highly educated respondents scoring high against 12% of those with low education.

Why this is now a policy question

In September 2025 the Commission published a new EU Financial Literacy Strategy as part of the Savings and Investments Union. The thinking is partly economic. People in the EU commit a smaller share of their savings to investments than people in the United States and keep more in savings accounts, and the Commission expects better literacy to help channel retail savings toward investment. In April 2026 the European Parliament adopted a resolution on financial literacy and finfluencers by 502 votes to 46, with 42 abstentions.

Brussels has limited tools here. Education belongs to the member states, so the strategy is non-legislative, and the Commission says it will not add funding. It can publish shared frameworks (adults in 2022, children and youth in 2023, both with the OECD) and measure progress, and a second Eurobarometer is planned for 2027.

Europe has 27 education systems and about two dozen languages. A digital game is easier to translate and reuse than a classroom course, which is the scalability argument the trial authors make.

What the evidence says

On whether financial education works at all, Kaiser, Lusardi, Menkhoff and Urban (2022) pooled 76 randomized experiments with over 160,000 participants. They found positive average effects on financial knowledge and on later financial behavior, similar in size to education interventions in other fields.

Games are a newer branch. Cannistrà and colleagues (2024) describe the first randomized trial of a game-based financial education activity in a multi-country setting. Schools were randomly assigned, and the treatment group played the Financial Escape Room, a story in which the player is a robber unlocking a bank vault by answering questions on payment methods, interest, change, VAT and inflation. Players scored 0.313 standard deviations higher on a four-question literacy test than the control group.

Belgium gained the most and started lowest, with students answering on average 1.55 of 4 questions correctly before the game. Estonia gained the least. The authors suggest Belgium's large gain reflects its low starting point, and they conclude that adapting games to local context can raise their effect.

The authors also argue that the game is short, runs without a teacher and costs little to deliver once built, although building it takes upfront investment. They compare the effect with earlier studies of traditional teaching and find it similar. The trial did not test the game against classes directly, so today the case for games rests on cost and reach.

The uncomfortable parts

What a good European financial game would need

This list is my interpretation of the evidence.

• Local versions, since effects differed across four countries.
• Completion and results reported by language, school track and background, so gaps are visible.
• Real stakes, such as a link to the curriculum, which the trial authors also suggest.
• Follow-up months later with behavior measures.
• Scenarios on scams and finfluencers. Parliament says literacy should cover digital finance, cybersecurity and spotting online scams, and a game can let people practice on a fake investment tip without losing money.

Takeaway

A well-built game raised financial literacy scores by about a third of a standard deviation in roughly 90 minutes, which deserves attention in a region where only 18% of adults score high. The evidence is still short-term, limited to four countries and tilted toward students who stayed the course. The 2027 Eurobarometer will show whether Europe's overall numbers move.

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