As payments have evolved from cash and checks to cards and digital payments, something essential has been lost: the human touch. Yet consumers are not data points—they crave payments experiences that are fast, secure, and effortless, and when they do need support, they want it to shift seamlessly into something personalized and attentive to their needs.
In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Robyn Burkinshaw, CEO and Founder at BlytzPay, and Christopher Miller, Lead Emerging Payments Analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the current gaps in the payments landscape, what an ideal model for more human transactions could look like, and how organizations can start to speak their customers’ language.
From Clicks to Conversations
Digital payments have reshaped the way people move money, bringing new speed and convenience to everyday transactions. Still, even with these advances, friction persists—from the hassle of repeated app downloads to layers of authentication that slow down the process. Too often, the very tools designed to simplify payments end up complicating them or leaving certain customers behind altogether.
“When we’re thinking about the technology that we’re building, we’re thinking about a bank box, and you either fit in the box or you don’t fit in the box,” Burkinshaw said. “Between 70% to 75% of the population fit in that and it’s easy for them to transact, but 25% of the population doesn’t fit in that. The unbanked and underbanked community doesn’t fit in that box.”
“If I’m in person at the grocery store, the checker doesn’t care if I’ve got $50 of my $100 bill in cash and $50 on a card,” she said. “But that has not expanded outside that bank box in the digital experience in a way that meets people where they are.”
Making payments conversational means giving consumers greater flexibility in how they transact. When adopted at scale, this model fosters an open ecosystem where all consumers—regardless of background or socioeconomic status—can access a payment experience that is both convenient and inclusive.
While some organizations have made their payment experiences more conversational than others, there is substantial room for improvement across the board—especially among traditionally rigid institutions such as government agencies and utility providers.
“I made a tax payment using a bill pay service and that tax payment was wrong by a penny,” Miller said. “The result was that that entire payment was returned to me and $0 of it was credited against the tax bill—and that’s good for no one.”
“You can imagine if you are a landlord or an auto dealer, if someone sends you almost all of the money that you want to get from them, you’d like to be able to take that and then have a conversation about whatever the remainder is,” he said. “A system that isn’t flexible enough to handle situations like that is one that’s missing opportunities to improve outcomes.”
AI and Common Sense
Payments challenges like these can take a real toll on customer relationships, especially as consumers increasingly expect transactions to be immediate, intuitive, and personalized.
“Consumers want control of their money,” Burkinshaw said. “It doesn’t matter if I make $100 or $1 million a month, I want control over where my money goes and how it’s transacting. We’ve gone from personalized relationships at the bank to digital relationships where there’s no engagement and there’s no interaction. I believe—especially in bill pay—we need to bring it back somewhere in the center where there is digital communication for convenience.”
It’s important for organizations to remember that every payment represents a person on the other end—someone who wants their needs to be acknowledged.
Yet, as many companies have become more tech-centric, that human connection has started to fade. The rise of artificial intelligence has only intensified worries about dehumanization, with many fearing that automation will come at the expense of empathy.
But when used thoughtfully, AI can actually strengthen—not replace—human connection. As part of a two-way, human-centric approach, it can help organizations customize their messages and move beyond the impersonal, one-size-fits-all push notification.
“The best AI is AI that is invisible,” Burkinshaw said. “People are thinking about AI as the end. AI isn’t the end, it’s a means to an end. It’s got to be paired with common sense; it’s got to be paired with critical thinking; but it also has to be paired with automation.”
“The cool thing about AI is it gives you the ability to wrap your arms around huge swaths of data, pull that data in, make it consumable, and then make it actionable,” she said. “If I’ve got data for the sake of data inside businesses, I have to understand what my KPIs are, what moves my business. Then I have to apply technology, AI included, in bite-sized pieces so that I can grab the things that are going to be effective to my business and make those changes.”
Payments in Flux
The more effectively an organization can analyze data and align insights with its objectives, the greater potential for success. In financial services, payments data—even from declined transactions—offers a wealth of valuable information.
“What happens today, especially in the subprime markets, is you take those declines, we throw the declines in a bucket and then we throw it at our collections department to go figure out what’s going on,” Burkinshaw said. “AI, in my opinion, gives the ability to be able to take tedious amounts of data and make it consumable in a way that can be effective when it comes to businesses.”
Understanding the trends behind these payments will be critical in a rapidly shifting environment. For example, recent changes to the credit card interchange fee model, prompted by merchants’ lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard, could change the paradigm for many shoppers.
Such changes may have an outsized impact on unbanked and underbanked communities, who often rely on payment methods that merchants may not always accept. These groups have already been affected by the decline of cash as a payment option, further widening the divide between the banked and unbanked.
Taken together, these factors suggest that more alternative payment methods are likely to emerge to better serve these communities.
Multilingual and Culturally Aware
The landscape also presents a significant opportunity for financial institutions, though these organizations may need to adapt their strategies.
Consumers are multilingual and come from diverse cultures and belief systems. There are substantial benefits for organizations that recognize these differences and adopt a conversational approach to payments.
This model can lead to higher collection rates, reduced call volumes, and stronger customer relationships. When technologies like AI are integrated effectively, it can also deliver operational efficiencies.
“The upsides are very clear,” Miller said. “If you think about the ability of a system to be able to speak in multiple languages and support folks, that’s a substantial advance over the requirement that you, for example, hire 10 people with 10 language skills to be able to provide that same level of service. It’s an important conversation, but any of these conversations have to involve not just the technology buyer and the technology seller, but the end user in an ongoing dialogue.”
To engage in meaningful dialogues that keep customers connected, organizations will increasingly need to speak the customer’s language—literally and figuratively.
“One of the things to emphasize is the need for bilingual communications,” Burkinshaw said. “If English isn’t my first language—or if English is my first language and I’m in a place where English isn’t the predominant language—we want our consumers to feel respected, connected, and valued.”
“We want to reach them in a language that’s convenient for them, especially when we’re when we’re talking about bill pay and we’re talking about the four to six bills that consumers are going to pay on a recurring basis,” she said. “Meet them where they are, address their needs, and do it in a way that’s not only convenient, but makes them feel like they’re a person.”
