BOSTON, Mass. — A new study by Mercator Advisory Group finds that walk-in bill payments, through tellers as well as kiosks, represent a significant portion of the recurring bill-payment market in the United States. At the current rate of growth, more than $80 billion in walk-in bill payments will be processed by 2009.
Walk-in bill payments have been traditionally dominated by non-bank providers, including direct billers, money-service businesses and retail outlets. As a result, fee revenues and access to traffic, including a large number of unbanked and underbanked customers, remain out of reach to banks. Furthermore, recent moves to expand the payment services offered to walk-in bill-payment customers threaten to further solidify this customer base in the non-bank sector and away from financial institutions.
"With the introduction of new services like insurance and prepaid, walk-in bill payment is becoming a wedge between the underserved markets and traditional banking relationship," states Michael Friedman, director of Mercator Advisory Group's Emerging Technologies Service and the report's principal analyst. "Banks will want to rethink their walk-in payments strategy to expand their customer base and foster organic growth."
