A Fast-Pass Bill Payment Experience Is Now a Must

One of the more glaring aspects of our recently released Service Commerce Performance Gap report is that 34% of consumers cite authentication as a pain point they often experience—ranking it third in a list of top frictions ahead of items such as unexpected fees and late fees due to payment issues.

Consider, more people are frustrated at the process of accessing their account than getting hit by unexpected fees. And this number rises to 46% among Gen Z.

This data spells out the dire need for solutions that directly address authentication. Gen Z is a tipping point, with future generations almost assuredly having even higher expectations for what a smooth authentication process should be.

Because of this, I wanted to revisit an article I authored last year on the need for a fast-pass bill payment experience. While we knew the need for a seamless experience existed, at the time we didn’t have data showing that one third of all consumers, and nearly half of Gen Z, were frustrated with their billing and payment experience right from the very start.

Why Authentication Is an Essential Element to a Positive Billing and Payment Experience

A core issue that many consumers have in regards to their service providers is that billing and payments is a recurring action. Relationships in this regard are not one-off transactions. As the report states, “these recurring services are the basis of an ongoing, billing-anchored relationship between a service provider and the customer who has to pay.”

In other words, if you bill me every month and I’m expected to pay every month, why am I treated like a stranger?

Certainly security issues play a major factor in the authentication process. That’s table stakes. But we’re living in a world where 60% of Americans pay their bills using one-time payments.

Here we have 60% of Americans, who may have up to 15 bills per month, paying each bill manually. That adds up to more than 9 billion times per year that U.S. consumers manually enter account details in an attempt to pay their bills.

This is why the point of user authentication is the single largest point of abandonment within the bill pay experience.

The Consequences of Bill Payment Abandonment at the Point of Login

Paymentus data shows that 80% of bill payments are abandoned at login. The point of user authentication, where a user must remember a user name, password, or account details, serves as the biggest roadblock in terms of getting your organization paid.

It’s likely you’ve experienced this in your personal life, where unknown or forgotten information leads you to delay a payment or purchase. In the world of eCommerce, this isn’t an issue. You can simply pick back up where you left off, with your cart still filled with your items.

In the world of bill pay, however, any delay can lead to late payments, fees, frustration, calls, and lost customers. Unrealized revenue impacts operational performance. Customer service representatives are forced to address payments as opposed to more pressing customer issues.

The stakes are very high and reliant on a large number of bill payers who are already stretched to the max. This is why a fast-pass bill payment experience is fast becoming a necessity.

How to Create a Fast-Pass Authentication Experience for Bill Payments

The average American pays 12-15 bills per month, which means 12-15 different passwords and usernames, at minimum. If payment information cannot be saved, add that to the mountain of information customers must remember to make a payment.

It’s essential that organizations make bill pay as simple as possible to ensure timely payments, but simple is a relative term. This can be done in several ways:

• Consolidate accounts under a single ID: Allow customers to view, manage, and pay all recurring bills in one centralized location.
• Eliminate repeat credentials: Remove the requirement for customers to enter usernames and passwords for every individual transaction.
• Enable Guest/one-click checkout: Give one-time payers immediate single-click options without multi-step authentication bottlenecks.

How Service Providers Can Ease Customers’ Bill Pay Authentication Burdens

The most important thing organizations can do today is to reconsider their idea of simplicity. While you may offer saved payment information, customers still have to log into your site each month if they wish to pay online. You may offer a wide variety of payment options, but if a customer has trouble logging into their account, they won’t care that they can pay using digital wallets.

Simplicity and convenience are all about reducing the amount of clicks and memorization that a customer must endure to pay a bill. Every manual process creates a barrier between you and a payment. A fast-pass experience—like the one offered by Paymentus BillWallet®—removes the barriers and replaces them with one-click convenience that cannot be matched by anything on the market today.