Rising Fees Undercut Instant Payout Momentum

Instant payouts are gaining traction as more recipients choose to receive money immediately. According to From Fast to Sticky: Why Instant Payouts Win Repeat Customers, a November 2025 PYMNTS Intelligence study produced in collaboration with Ingo Payments, more than half of individuals who receive instant payments at least once choose instant as their most used method for receiving funds. Waiting is losing its appeal when technology can deliver money in minutes.

Use Cases Are Growing

The report highlights a variety of situations where instant payouts now play a role. Consumers receiving earnings, loan proceeds, insurance reimbursements and funds for products or services increasingly expect immediate availability.

Instant access helps simplify cash flow planning and eliminates uncertainty. People who experience fast receipt of funds tend to want that consistency for future payments as well.

From Fast to Sticky: Why Instant Payouts Win Repeat Customers draws on a survey of 4,054 U.S. adults, including 2,237 recipients of disbursements. The research was fielded in May 2025 and is census-balanced to reflect national income, gender, and age distributions. The study is designed to examine how instant payout demand changes depending on fee presence and payout frequency.

The data identifies three groups based on how important disbursements are to overall income. Twenty-one percent of recipients are categorized as core cash flow or primary income users.

Within this group, fee presence produces the most significant change in behavior. When instant payouts are received with no fee, 90% of primary income recipients stick with instant as their preferred method. When they pay even one fee, stickiness drops to 58%. That is a 54-point gap tied directly to cost.

Other Recipient Groups React Differently To Fees

Supplemental cash flow users make up 41% of disbursement recipients. For them, removing fees increases instant payout stickiness by 14%. Meanwhile incidental users, who represent 38% of recipients and receive payouts infrequently, show only a 5% difference between fee and no fee experiences.

These differences support a model where fee design is matched to payout frequency and user reliance. One cost structure does not fit all.

Loan And Income Payouts Show Clear Patterns

The report examines specific payout categories. For loan disbursements, instant payout stickiness reaches 93% when no fees apply, but drops to 70% when a fee is charged.

The same pattern appears for income and earnings payouts, where 93% of recipients stick with instant when it is free compared with roughly 70% when fees apply.

Users who depend on instant access for everyday financial needs make the clearest fee-driven decisions.

Fee Strategy Is Becoming An Adoption Strategy

The findings suggest that providers should think of fees in relationship terms rather than transaction terms. Free instant payouts for high frequency or primary income users can build trust. Selective fee models for occasional payouts can still preserve revenue. The broader trend supports a flexible approach that aligns fee decisions with recipient reliance and payout patterns rather than treating instant access as a uniform product.

Instant payouts continue to grow across categories and expectations continue to rise. The question for providers now revolves around how to structure fees so that instant access becomes a repeat habit rather than a one-time experience. The report points directly to the value of informed fee design to expand instant adoption while maintaining sustainable economics.