The future of payments is contactless, if 2021 is any indication, as digital payment services like Zelle and PayPal become increasingly ubiquitous.

Ninety-three percent of 2,000 adults surveyed in a recent study by $3.3 trillion JPMorgan Chase said they used one or more digital payment services in 2021. The study, which delves into digital banking use, found that mobile apps are the most-used banking channel with 73% of respondents saying they use banking apps once a week or more, and 62% calling mobile banking “a service they cannot live without.”

The study also found that:

• 13% of respondents had booked travel through their bank’s online portal or mobile app, and just under three out of four of those individuals said they’d be “highly likely” to do it again. Among those who had not booked travel through digital banking, 34% said they’d be willing to do so.
• 76% are checking their credit scores through credit services, and 44% of Gen Z respondents — those born from the mid-1990s through the early 2010s — said they use credit-monitoring services to learn how to raise their credit scores.

47% of lenders still use manual data collection processes

But when it comes to technology, lenders have some catching up to do — 47% of lenders are still using manual processes such as emails, PDFs and spreadsheets to collect data, according to a report from lending and digital banking events company LendIt Fintech and small business lending application programming interface (API) provider ForwardAI.

The report queried 97 banks, credit unions and financial technology providers on their use of data in business lending and found that only 15% use direct data collection to access borrower information. Forty percent acknowledged that manual documentation and data gathering have a negative effect on loan processes.

In addition, the report found that:

• One-third of lenders collect financial data within three days of a loan application; and
• 40% of respondents said collecting financial data takes more than a week, and 19% said it takes more than two weeks.

Artificial intelligence for reaching customers

Most financial organizations look to artificial intelligence (AI) for aid in reaching customers, according to a study by customer data platform (CDP) provider Tealium, which surveyed 1,000 marketing and business leaders from the financial services, retail, health care and technology sectors in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific to gauge their use of CDPs.

Seventy percent of financial services organizations say that AI is important to achieving their marketing objectives compared with 60% of overall respondents, according to the study.

Digital customer experience (CX) is less of a priority for financial services firms than it is for retail, technology or health care: 24% of respondents in financial services said providing a better digital CX is their organizations’ top priority, according to the study. For retail, technology and health care it was 36%, 30% and 29%, respectively.

Bank Automation Summit, taking place March 1-2 in Charlotte, N.C., is the first and only event to focus solely on automation in banking. The event will feature the brightest minds from across financial services on intelligent automation strategies and deployment. Learn more and register for Bank Automation Summit 2022.