With all the announcements this week regarding several financial institutions roll out of Early Warning’s P2P product technology under the Zelle brand, there have been many opinions written about which of the existing P2P solutions will win consumers over. A post in the Financial Brand explains quite succinctly why this is not a winner takes all situation:
”…people will choose the product, service, or channel that is most convenient to them at the moment they want to do something. What that means is this:
If there’s someone I regularly text with (using our iPhones), and we’ve updated our phones to iOS 11, and they don’t care that the money I owe them will go onto an Apple Pay cash card instead of into their bank account (which you better believe I care about), then Apple might be my choice of P2P service.
If Facebook is my primary means of communicating with someone I owe money to, and that person is based in the US, and that person has a debit card from a bank, and I don’t care that Facebook has crappy fraud protection, then using Facebook’s P2P service might be my choice of P2P service.
If there’s someone I regularly split restaurant checks, or rent and utility bills with, and we’ve been using Venmo, then you will need to explain to me why we should change the way we’ve been doing something that works perfectly well.
If I’ve never used any of the existing P2P services, and neither has the person I owe money to, and they really need access to the money immediately, and it isn’t going to cost us anything to execute the transaction, then we might use Zelle. ”
Consumers will most likely not find it confusing or burdensome to interact with multiple solutions until they find a reason, such as a bad experience or fraud, that would convince them that one doesn’t deserve their business.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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