U.S. Bank is realizing gains from the $8 billion it has invested in technology since 2019 as it remains focused on developing its payments technology. 

“We’ve invested a lot in the company in digital and technology capabilities over the last five years that are starting to pay off,” Chairman and Chief Executive Andy Cecere said during the Bernstein 40th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference on May 30. “We’re at part of the curve now that those are no longer investment increases but return payback.”

Chief Financial Officer John Stern said the Minneapolis-based bank has deployed technology in order to: 

• Reduce banking process time; 
• Reduce the number of people needed for processes; and 
• Drive call center efficiency. 

Investments in payments tech 

As tech spend is expected to level off, the $660 billion bank has focused investment in its payments business, which is also yielding efficiency returns, Cecere said. Payments has been “a tremendous focus for us for the last five years, [and] a lot of it was in tech-led,” he said. 

The bank has invested resources in its traditional merchant processing system and is approaching a “level point on that investment spend,” where more than 30% of the bank’s payments “activity is tech-led processing and tech-led sales,” Cecere said.