Can Your Payments Processing Platform Keep Up with Consumer Demand?

Can Your Payments Processing Platform Keep Up with Consumer Demand?

The payments process is often the most frequent point of content between billers and their customers.  Accepting payments via a few popular channels is no longer enough to meet the needs of today’s busy, tech-savvy consumers.  Modern lifestyles and advances in technology leave many seeking multiple convenient ways to pay.

A difficult, inflexible, or cumbersome payments process can be enough to lead customers to a competitor even if they are otherwise satisfied with a biller.  As companies like Apple, Starbucks, and Amazon shape consumer expectations by leading the way in payments innovation, billers need to keep up with emerging trends and offer their customers a payments experience that is consistent with contemporary standards.

Reliance on traditional bill payment methods is decreasing as innovating alternatives emerge.  Facebook, for example, recently announced consumers can make purchases and transfer funds to friends through Messenger.  As usage of these kinds of apps and devices increases, businesses should move towards engaging their customers on preferred platforms.  Chatbots, for example, offer customers a better bill payments experience within a familiar digital context.  With over a billion monthly active users, Facebook Messenger is likely to become a popular bill payment option, among younger demographics especially.

Consumers often switch between various payment channels from one billing cycle to the next.  Financial situations, travel plans, and even what someone is doing when submitting a payment can affect how (s)he chooses to pay.  Customers are more likely to be satisfied when they have a full range of options that enable them to pay their bills however they want, wherever they want, and at any time.

Your customers’ payment preferences are becoming more multidimensional as technology takes a central role in everyday life.  Billers should focus on the payments experience as a whole, ensuring it is ubiquitous and seamless across the board.  As the payments ecosystem becomes more complex, a comprehensive EBPP platform can provide modern payments capabilities, give consumers more freedom of choice, and also help simplify backend operations.