I’ve written in past years about the Fiserv Billing Household Survey, which describes consumer trends in paying bills. You can read those articles from 2013, 2015, and 2016.
I’ve been checking periodically to see if Fiserv released a similar survey for 2017, but can’t locate one. However, I did find a research paper, Expectations & Experiences | Consumer Payments, from April, 2017. You can download the paper from this link. Downloading requires your name and contact information but, from experience, I can assure you they won’t spam you!
Highlights from the paper
Here are some highlights from the research paper I think utilities would do well to pay attention to:
- 74% of online banking users use online bill pay (page 3)
- In the 30 days prior to the survey, the number one reason consumers used online banking was to pay bills (page 4)
- 79% of consumers are satisfied with online bill pay (page 6)
- Convenience is the number one reason consumers use either their bank’s online banking bill pay service or online bill pay directly from billers (page 7)
- 76% of consumers say real-time payment delivery is at least somewhat important (page 9)
What does this mean for your utility?
Clearly, the trend is towards paying bills online, whether that means using your online bill pay site or your customer using their bank’s bill pay service.
If you don’t already offer online bill pay, I recommend you move as quickly as possible to start offering it.
If you do offer online bill pay through a third party, and it’s not fully integrated into your billing system (i.e. you have to import payments the next day), I encourage you to investigate a fully integrated online bill pay solution.
The final takeaway is, if you are still receiving paper checks when your customer pays using their bank’s bill pay service, to consider using a payment consolidator to receive those checks electronically.
