REPORT: Consumer Finance Firms Face Harsh ‘Innovate or Die’ Reality

The digital payments revolution is raising consumers’ expectations when dealing with service providers. Seamless payment experiences from leaders in the tech sector like Amazon and Uber have contributed to consumers expecting easy, seamless digital experiences. In the consumer finance industry, companies that fail to provide efficient and modern digital billing and payment processes run the risk of seeing their customer bases switch to rivals with more flexible payment options.

As a result, consumer finance companies are looking into digitized payments platforms. In fact, 94% of billing and payment executives at these companies say digital billing capabilities are important to boosting growth. They see digitized payment platforms as integral to customer satisfaction and believe they can provide other benefits, such as speeding the bill payment and collection process. These anticipated benefits may explain why more than half of consumer finance companies are investing or planning to invest in digitized payments platforms.

These are just some of the findings PYMNTS covers in The Digital Payments Edge: How Consumer Finance Companies Can Succeed In The Payment Processing Revolution, in collaboration with ACI Worldwide. We surveyed 104 billing and payments executives at consumer finance companies that send more than 40,000 customer bills each month to explore these companies’ efforts to provide customers with seamless, digital-first billing and payments experiences.

More key findings from the study include:

Billing executives from consumer finance companies have an opportunity to increase their companies’ pace of growth by investing more aggressively in digitized bill payment processes. Ninety-four percent of billing executives at consumer finance companies say it is important to have digital billing capabilities to boost growth rates in the next five years, and 89% say it is important to have digital payment capabilities. Companies have been investing in payments digitization for years to improve their security, efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Companies that sustain digital modernization initiatives will position themselves to achieve the greatest returns on their investments.

Ninety-seven percent of billing and payments executives say innovation with their digitized billing and payment processes will enhance customer satisfaction. Consumer finance companies that successfully use digitized billing and payment processes to improve customer satisfaction and accelerate the bill collection process will put themselves at a competitive advantage. Consumer finance companies would do well to focus on the connection between digitized payments processes and customer satisfaction as they invest in digital tools and technologies. Consumers spend so much of their time online that service providers need to meet them there to ensure that bill payment processes operate quickly and efficiently.

Consumer finance companies that focus on the features customers expect, such as secure payments, enhance their ability to achieve the benefits payments digitization offers. Ninety-one percent of consumer finance companies say their customers are “very” or “extremely” interested in the security of their payment processes, and 99% of surveyed companies say payment security is one of their strengths. Choice in payment methods is also important. Seventy-five percent of consumer finance company billing and payment executives say their customers are “very” or “extremely” interested in having multiple options to pay their bills, while only 63% of executives believe that offering multiple payment options is one of their strengths.

To learn more about how consumer finance firms are enhancing their competitive edge with payments innovation, download the report.