71% of Consumers Who Received Disbursements in 2021 Could Choose How They Got Paid

Approximately 158 million U.S. consumers received roughly 11 billion disbursements in 2021, whether from the government, their employers, their insurance companies or others, according to The State of Consumer Disbursements, a PYMNTS and Ingo Money collaboration based on a survey of 2,951 U.S. consumers.

Get the report: The State Of Consumer Disbursements: Who Pays Consumers—And How Quickly

Seventy-one percent of the surveyed consumers who received disbursements in 2021 said they were able to choose between at least two disbursement methods.

The percentage of consumers who were given a choice in how they receive disbursements varied, depending upon the source of the disbursements. This ranged from a low of 61% among those who received product purchase-related disbursements to a high of 82% among those who received disbursements for marketing/focus group participation.

When consumers can choose the disbursement method, they tend to choose instant payments. Seventy-eight percent of consumers who received instant payments said they could choose their method of receipt. Here, by category, the percentages ranged from a low of 67% among those who received product purchase-related disbursements to a high of 89% among those who received disbursements for marketing/focus group participation.

There were two use cases in which consumers were more commonly able to select instant payment options: medical research group participation, where the share in which instant payments were the most common method of receipt when a choice was available was 26%, and legal settlements, where that share was 25%.

Other uses cases for which consumers were commonly able to select instant payment options were other disbursements (22%) and marketing/focus group participation (21%). Just behind those were three use cases for which the share was around 20%: product purchase-related disbursements, income and earning disbursements, and insurance and borrowing disbursements.