Most Consumers Want P2P Payments from Their Bank, Survey Finds

A new survey from Fiserv showed growing use cases and interest among consumers for P2P payments provided by banks.

A significant majority of consumers (79%) say they are interested in using a digital P2P payments service provided by their bank, according to a new survey released this week by Fiserv, the provider of PopMoney.

Most consumers are also already making at least one digital payment per month, the survey of 2500 consumers, titled “How Americans Pay Each Other,” found. Most of the respondents (60%) said that they make a payment at least once a month on their laptop or desktop, and 30% of the respondents also said that they make at least one payment a month via their mobile phone.

The survey found that 88% of the respondents had sent money to another person in the past year. The majority of those respondents (56%) said they used cash, with 41% saying they used checks for such payments, and 31% using a P2P payments service like PayPal.

The survey showed a growing use case for P2P payments in sharing household bills among roommates and partners. Nearly half of the respondents (46%) said that one person in their household pays the bills and then other household members pay them back. Interestingly, such an arrangement was not just for those living with roommates, but many married couples, particularly younger couples, also had one person pay the bills and the other pay them back later. Among married couples between the ages of 18-24, 64% used this arrangement, and 57% of married couples between the ages of 25-34 did so as well.

The survey also looked at the demographics between how people of different ages and genders pay each other. The majority of the respondents who had children (63%) said they had sent money to their children in the past year. But many of the younger Gen Y (56%) and Gen X (35%) said they had also given money to their parents in the past year. The survey found that men were more likely to have sent money to friends, spouses, co-workers or roommates, while women were more likely to have sent money to their children.

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio