Like an unfulfilled relationship, banks are missing out on a potential revenue source.
Indeed, Javelin Strategy & Research identifies expedited payment services as a product that banks need to offer, in part because it could help banks recoup some overdraft fee revenue lost to regulatory hurdles, according to a report released last week.
Such expedited payment services allow consumers to get their payments to their service providers before incurring a late fee. Billers have historically been the ones offering expedited payments to customers. The average fee for an expedited payment in 2010 was $6.16, down from $7.95 in 2008.
The report finds only 7 out of the top 40 banks offer an expedited payment service, and of those that offer it, most do a poor job marketing the product.
“Most banks that have services in place are not promoting them effectively,” Beth Robertson, director of payments research at Javelin, tells Bank Innovation. Indeed, she recommends financial institution inject more clarity on not only how the service works, but also on how much it saves consumers from late fees — an amount which is rather remarkable. Consumers spent $1 billion on expedited payments in 2010, which brought in around $3.8 billion in late fee net savings for consumers, according to the report. Javelin projects that expedited payments will save consumers $6.3 billion by 2015.
Still, Javelin finds that use of expedited payment services will flatten out since the nature of the service itself will reach a saturation point in terms of how much consumers will use it, says Robertson. Why? The service itself is more of a “emergency kind of payment option,” and generally, people will not require such a product every month, Robertson explains. Regardless, Javelin believes banks’ pocketbooks will deepen if they offer expedited payment services, rather than let billers score all the spoils.