My colleague Doug King recently moderated a panel about age-related attitudes toward banking and payment practices. He spoke with a boomer, a gen-Xer, a millennial, and a gen-Zer.
Most notable about these panelists: not how different they were from each other but how alike. Keeping in mind that a sample of four is not representative and that all were Federal Reserve employees, panelists of every age agreed about risk when it comes to their money: they hate it.
All four had used a brick-and-mortar bank one way or another in the last year, and there was no interest in switching to a digital-only bank or fintech option—even though all panelists struggled to remember the last time they had written a check. One panelist said, "I stick with what I know." Another: "I just don't have time to do the research." A third, "I'm staying with the traditional, just in case." They wanted not the bricks, not the mortar, but rather the security implied by the existence of solid real estate.
They admitted to more risk-averse behavior: no one—not the youngest, not the IT guy—owned crypto assets. Too risky, they said. Most are storing card numbers with an online merchant with high brand recognition but not at other online shopping websites. It's worth the small amount of time to put in the number at lesser known sites, said three of the four.
Do you see a marketing opportunity out there? Some newer services are selling the idea of speed—that is, payments that are fast and frictionless. Or the social benefits of tagging payments with emojis. Or convenience. Or a user-friendly app. But these four people, at least, want safety.
Of course, newer ways to pay do offer security enhancements—for example, two-factor authentication when you use a phone with fingerprint or face ID authentication to pay. And, with so many choices available, panelists said they would like to better understand their payment options. This means that maybe customers are waiting to hear more about product features and benefits that emphasize security and, according to these four, at least, that are delivered by recognized brands they already know and trust.
By Claire Greene, a payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed