Americans are embracing person-to-person payments, with more than a third now using services such as Zelle and Venmo to pay each other back, according to a Bank of America survey.
Among millennials, P2P payments have become the social norm, used by 62%. And other age groups are catching up, with 45% of non-users polled saying that they plan to jump on the bandwagon within the next year, shows the survey of 1005 adults with banking relationships and smartphones.
Of those that use P2P payment services, 68% cite convenience and time savings as the reason, while 48% mention peer influence. Only 16% say that they use the new digital options because they do not want to use cash and cheques.
The growing ubiquity of services is also a factor, with 30% saying that they have started using P2P payments because of new offerings from banks. BofA recently revamped its app with aspects of Zelle, the platform it owns with other banks which processed 170 million payments last year boasting an aggregate transaction volume of $55 billion, more than double that of PayPal-owned rival Venmo.
Timing is top of mind for P2P payments service users, with 69% of respondents saying they pay others back within the same day, and one-third in under an hour. Similarly, 53% expect others to pay them back within 24 hours, and 22% within the hour.
Respondents see the mobile trend continuing. When asked what they believe to be true about children under the age of 10, 71% agree they won’t know how to write a cheque and 42% that they won’t use physical credit cards. One in seven think the youngest members of Generation Z won’t even know what cash is.
"Technology is developing faster today than at any time in history, and our newest report demonstrates how consumers are embracing emerging technologies to make sense of their financial lives," says Michelle Moore, head, digital banking, BofA.