After COVID, Consumers More Comfortable With Digital Payments

Among the many, many ways the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives is the way it’s changed how we think about digital payments.

As we noted in the latest installment of our Expanding Payments Choice Playbook, research shows that 49% of consumers have gotten more used to making digital payments as a result of the pandemic. In many cases, that was because they had few other options in the early stretch of the outbreak.

But digital disbursements represent the minority of disbursements methods, with just 16% of millennial consumers and 17% of Gen Z respondents saying they had gotten an instant disbursement when surveyed in 2020. The growing acceptance of digital payments could bring those numbers up.

More Americans Received Disbursements in 2020-2021 Than Recent Memory

Our findings also showed that more Americans received a disbursement over the past two years than in recent memory. Once again, this was down to COVID, as many of those disbursements came from the $400 billion in federal stimulus payments made to 138 million Americans, for a total of 171 million transactions.

And just as consumer preferences have skewed more and more to the digital when making payments, so too have their tastes changed to digital channels such as virtual cards, automated clearing house (ACH) or direct deposit when receiving those payments.

Our research found electronic payments are now preferred by 68% of consumers for hourly wages, 47% for receiving loan disbursements and 45% for medical reimbursements.

Digital Disbursements Growing

Lastly, our research found that the receipt rate of instant disbursements tripled over the past year, growing fivefold in the last three years to the point that it now accounts for 17% of all disbursements: investment accounts, income, insurance claims and product purchases.

This growth coincides with an increasing awareness among consumers of instant payments in general, something 37% of consumers say they’re aware of, a 50% growth since 2020.

If you’d like to learn more about the changing face of payment choice, download your free copy of the Expanding Payments Choice Playbook, a collaboration with Onbe.