Bill payment has become much more convenient in the digital age. Services like online banking and digital wallets have allowed people to make payments with the click of a button. For those who don’t have time for this, automatic payments can be easily set up, ensuring bills are paid on time each month. Whether you use digital payments or sign up for automated billing, there is no excuse for forgetting to pay a bill ever again! Technology allows us to take care of finances quickly and effectively, with complete peace of mind.
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Data for today’s episode is provided by Mercator Advisory Group’s report –North American PaymentsInsights, U.S – Subscription Services and Bill Pay: Card Payments Dominate
Consumers Show Little Preference for Any Particular Bill Payment Type:
- Digital payment is the most preferred category (NET) of consumer bill pay, with 43% consumer preference.
- Automatic payments, including deductions & credit/debit, are a close second, with 37% consumer preference.
- Tech forward consumers, tech laggards, and average consumers rate almost all payment types as equally preferable.
- Tech laggards are more likely (17%) to prefer paying bills by mail, compared to average (11%) and tech forward consumers (8%).
- Similarly, household income is not determinant of payment preference. Households earning >$100K & <$100K rate payments types as equally preferable.
- Households earning <$100K have a higher degree of preference (23%) for paying bills at a company’s website or mobile vs. households >$100K (16%).
About Report
Mercator Advisory Group’s most recent consumer survey report, Subscription Services and Bill Pay: Card Payments Dominate, from the 2019 Technology Survey of the bi-annual North American PaymentsInsights series, examines U.S. consumers’ current use of subscription services and methods for paying their bills.
The report, which is based on an online panel survey administered to 3,006 U.S. adults in November-December 2019, presents results from questions exploring how adults in the United States use and pay for “box of the month” clubs and online subscription services. It also explores the ways consumers pay their bills and the increasing importance of digital bill payment.
Regarding subscription services in the U.S., consumers are about twice as likely to subscribe to an online subscription service as to subscribe to a “box of the month” service (59% vs 23%). Interestingly, a relatively large portion of American adults (38%) do not subscribe to either type of service.
When it comes to paying bills, the majority of consumers (6 in 10) are currently paying at least some of their bills electronically through either automatic billing or bank account withdrawal. Consumers are paying bills in equal proportion through electronic bill pay via their bank, their biller, or bill pay service.
“This report explores two very important aspects in the payments ecosystem—subscription services and bill payment. Electronic payments play a very large role in both of these areas, and it is important to understand the payments dynamics of both,” stated the author of the report, Peter Reville, director of Primary Research Services at Mercator Advisory Group, which includes the North American PaymentsInsights series.
