Are You Encouraging Healthy
Payments Activity?

One of the key pillars of profitability for retail banks is to ensure that customers are regularly making payments across digital services. While many providers, rightly, are building complementary services and adding product inventory to digital channels, they also need to make healthy payments activity a priority.  

The most evident solution is to offer digital wallet provisioning. But just 10% of US-based retail checking providers tracked by the Digital Banking Analyzer currently offer it during onboarding. And only 29% of them offer it in the full app servicing environment.  

Offering up a healthy list of peer-to-peer (P2P) and bill payment options is a growing necessity – from Zelle to QR code provisioning to bill pay to pay to an email address or telephone number. Still, even with any or all of these, customers will likely leave their main banking provider if they don’t offer digital wallet integration. 

Leading providers are driving payments as a core banking capability by promoting journey initiations on their app homepage. In many instances, payments initiations sit in a bottom navigation bar. Those that realize the importance of healthy payment activity, however, are doubling down by offering interactive tiles at the top of the page (see image). This approach is being taken by fintechs, many of whom are gaining share of payments and deposits.  

The message for digital teams is clear: make payments capabilities a priority – and promote them – before the competition does, and does it better.