At a recent conference primarily for credit unions and small banks, I participated in an interesting discussion about the future role of banks and legacy payments for person-to-person (P2P) payments. Few of the attendants offered a P2P solution as part of their online or mobile banking platform and those that did claimed the product was seldom used, if at all. There was consensus that a majority of their customers just aren't interested in this product.
I recently wrote on this topic, hailing the check as an efficient form of P2P payment thanks in large part to mobile remote deposit capture. But perhaps my experience of writing a check to a 20-something babysitter was more of an anomaly than the norm. A recent survey that GOBanking Rates conducted reveals that nearly 40 percent of consumer banking customers never write checks and 61 percent of banking customers between the ages of 18 and 24 claim to never write checks. Another survey of 10,000 millennials (those born from 1981 to 2000) reveals that the banking industry is at the highest risk of disruption. Seventy percent of the respondents believe that the way we pay for things in five years will be totally different. One in three of the respondents believe they will not need a bank.
So what can financial institutions take away from my experience and these surveys? Two things stand out to me. First, there are still banking customers (young ones included) that continue to write checks or prefer to receive checks over alternatives from banks and nonbanks. Though I fully expect check usage to continue to decline, the complete demise of the check is a fantasy. Second, and most important, financial institutions that choose not to evolve in the payments space risk disintermediation or even becoming irrelevant. While their customers today may not want specific products or payment capabilities, the reality is that the makeup of a majority of these customers today won't be the same as in the future. A generation of potentially new customers has a very different view on payments and banking. Ignoring these future customers will lead to harsh realities for financial institutions. What is your institution doing in terms of payments to attract and keep millennials and avoid becoming a dinosaur?
By Douglas A. King, payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed