Envisions a future of consumer-driven digital communications and transactions
Solutions by Text (SBT) – the brand behind FinText (™), an embedded messaging and payments platform for consumer finance businesses – today unveiled comprehensive industry research with Datos Insights, on how consumers pay their bills. “The State of Bill Pay – Digital Payment Trends and Growing Demand for Text Messaging,” explores key digitization trends and evolving dynamics between bank, biller and consumer-centric payment models.
Within the last year, Americans paid approximately 16.8 billion bills, spending roughly $5.6 trillion. While the way in which consumers pay their bills has changed significantly over the last decade, this research identifies an industry in the midst of a shift towards a more consumer-centric approach that will bring programmable, communicative and tokenized ways of making bill payments.
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Key findings on the current state of bill pay shows:
- Of the 16.8 billion bills paid within the last year, approximately 10 billion (60%) were executed as one-time payments.
This highlights a significant reliance on consumers’ organizational skills and memory, often leading to late or missed payments. With this, the industry has the opportunity to better serve consumers with two-way communication strategies. - 54% of consumers paid a bill late, with 60% of them paying a bill late simply because they forgot or didn’t know a bill was due.
This again presents an opportunity for the industry to identify ways to better capture consumers’ attention around bill payments through communication channels, but also shows how building more connected processes, such as tokenization, can bring consumers even more convenience, speed and security when paying a bill. - Despite the significant shift towards online bill payments over the last decade, only half of the 10 billion one-time bill payments were made online.
This reveals a runway for financial institutions to enhance digital payment services with more programmable actions.
“In today’s fast-paced digital world, the way consumers pay their bills is evolving rapidly. Our new industry research, ‘The State of Bill Pay,’ highlights a significant shift towards a more consumer-centric approach that removes the guesswork from bill payments,” said Dave Baxter, CEO of Solutions by Text. “These findings reveal not only the willingness of consumers to embrace new channels for bill payments, but their desire for faster, frictionless, reliable and safe payment options. Text messaging has emerged as a channel to bridge the gap, meeting consumers where they are, and Solutions by Text is proud to be leading the way.”
“Our research confirms the fact that consumers are increasingly growing accustomed to convenience: Text reminders and embedded payments within a text streamline the payment experience which benefit both consumers and billers,” said David Albertazzi, Director, Retail Banking and Payments, Datos Insights.
“The State of Bill Pay” highlights the use of text messaging for bill payments as a channel that is able to meet consumers where they are, showing that both older and younger generations prefer text communications and increasingly expect mobile payment solutions.
- Consumers want to see their financial institutions utilize text to communicate with them about their bills. At least 66% of consumers expressed the willingness to pay a bill within a text message. This enthusiasm skyrockets to 88% when focusing on the tech-savvy Gen Z and Millennial demographics.
- Not only do consumers want to hear from financial institutions via text generally, but when it comes to late payment or past-due reminders, 80% of consumers prefer receiving them via text. Furthermore, 95% of consumers who have made a late payment would have found a text reminder to pay their bill valuable.
- While the average American adult pays 67 bills per year, only 57% of these consumers have received a text message related to paying a bill or a reminder to pay a bill. There is tremendous potential to bridge the gap between the percentage of consumers who prefer text reminders (previous bullet) and the fact that only half have actually received them.
- Consumers are interested in going beyond just paying a bill within a text and would like the option to communicate directly with billers over text on things such as payment strategies. One such approach is the use of two-way text communication to assist financially challenged consumers by providing payment options. Of consumers who didn’t have money and thus paid their bills late, 83% would have found texted repayment options helpful.
Solutions by Text made today’s announcement following the company’s recent launch of embedded payments within its FinText platform that streamlines the entire bill pay experience, from initiation to payment directly within the text channel, as well as a new partnership with leading global FinTech, Nuvei Corporation. To learn more about Solution by Text’s compliant solutions through the power of texting, please visit solutionsbytext.com.
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