Invisible Payment Solutions Reap Personalized Loyalty Results

A tailored payment experience can make all the difference in today’s challenging macroeconomic environment.

PYMNTS recently sat down with Sanjay Gupta, EVP of ACI Worldwide’s Biller Segment, to talk about user experience, digital transformation and how strong relationships can lead to better cash flow, particularly during challenging times.

To be sure, inflation is coming down hard on Americans, with nearly one-third struggling to pay their bills. For companies that help facilitate those bill payments, it is becoming more important than ever to provide as many payment options as possible and to help make the experience seamless, particularly as the cost realities of daily life grow more harsh.

PYMNTS research shows that, as a direct result of inflation, 80% of consumers are worried about the future — and just under half of consumers say that difficulty paying their bills is “souring” their outlook for the future.

Rising Prices 

With rising prices across electricity, gas and other areas of life as the greatest economic concern for consumers, ACI’s Gupta pointed out that “if you’re paying more on your [utility] bills and you’re paying using a credit card or debit card, depending on who is bearing the cost of that, the overall cost for you is going up. Looking at ways to optimize that [for the customer] with different payment choices can potentially lower cost through more offerings.”

For today’s customers, Gupta says, the user experience is really important. He sees three themes driving and supporting this: “The first pillar is ongoing digital engagement, being in touch with them as an end consumer and ensuring they’re included in that digital payment and digital engagement ecosystem. The second part, which links to the macroeconomic environment as well, is around the total cost of ownership around the payments experience — we want to lower that cost to the end user by optimizing solutions on offer. And then the third which links to the other two is just overall satisfaction throughout the entire payment process, making it as seamless and easy as possible, almost invisible.”

A majority of Americans, 65%, believe the U.S. is on track to enter a recession, with 26% believing we are already in one. Adding to the general pall being cast and sense of economic malaise, as PYMNTS reported earlier, U.S. consumer confidence is consistently doing even worse on a month-to-month basis.

Within this tricky environment, where the economy is losing momentum and 56 million Americans have no plans to do any holiday shopping due to a lack of cash and need to focus on the essentials, providing a positive payments experience can make or break customer retention as frustrations boil over.

Frictionless and Invisible

A key way to do this is by making the experience “really easy for inclusion in the digital ecosystem, making the payments invisible and almost an afterthought by tailoring them to the situation at hand and the need of the customer,” Gupta said.

“Enabling those digital payment opportunities, whether it’s by calling in and talking to an interactive voice response system, whether it’s going on your web browser or using your mobile phone,” he said. “Providing these different channels of digital interaction as well as different payment types be it credit or debit cards, ACH, or other alternate forms … To provide a good experience it should be as individually tailored and frictionless to the end user to the extent, and really beyond the extent, that it’s possible.”

He points to companies like Uber and Lyft, which while just as reliant on the payments process as any other business, have moved that experience to the background where users hardly think about it. “You step out of your ride, the payment is taken care of. It’s easy and convenient,” Gupta said.

Increasing efforts are being made across industries to accommodate consumers’ desire for frictionless digital experiences, including new trends like real-time payments (RTP) that continue to move beyond the concept stage and are steadily becoming a business reality.

Industry players who can find and leverage ways to move money faster and easier will define what tomorrow’s user experience looks like. Traditionally, those able to define experience tend to similarly enjoy the greatest loyalty relative to the competition, making investments in digital solutions a mission-critical approach, particularly in trying economic times.