Podcast: New technologies for increasing debit card revenue

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Listen and learn how Fiserv helps financial institutions and their cardholders meet the growing demand for non-traditional offerings for debit and ATM payments and convenient and fee-free access to their money at ATMs. The Fiserv Accel and MoneyPass networks are on the cutting edge of debit and ATM funds access services and provide the latest advancements in PIN Debit, surcharge-free ATM and cardless ATM technology that enhance cardholder value and transaction economics and revenue for financial institutions. Learn more at Fiserv.com.

Podcast summary

In the U.S., we have lots of choice in payment methods — credit cards, debit cards, cash, checks and newer forms of electronic payments. But many of us still prefer cash and debit cards.

It's a subject that Carol Specogna, vice president of card services at Fiserv, knows well. In an ATM Marketplace podcast, she spoke about new technologies that financial institutions can leverage to boost their debit card revenue. She also gave an overview of how the debit market is performing.

"Year over year, debit cards remain one of the most frequently used forms of payment," she said pointing to a recent Nilson report that indicated that in the U.S. debit cards gained market share in 2018. In fact, last year debit cards represented about 40% of purchase volume, she said.

Specogna cited several reasons for that. For one, consumers are becoming more comfortable using debit cards in mobile payment apps, both for in-person and customer-not-present transactions. "We are also seeing more e-commerce activity and more card-on-file transactions," she said. A card-on-file transaction is a transaction where a cardholder authorizes a merchant to store the cardholder's payment details and use that for future purchases.

Additionally, we also seeing growth in debit rails for person-to-person transactions, particularly in the last two year, she said. Thanks to apps like Venmo, PayPal, Popmoney and even Zelle, P2P payments are increasingly taking the place of cash. Take the instance of where you go out to lunch with a friend, your friend pays with a card and you owe your friend $20 for your part of the bill. It's often easier to pay with P2P then cash, which we don't always have on hand, she said.

"We used to pay for small ticket items with cash, but in our debit industry, we've done a really good job of shifting those transactions to the debit rail," Specogna said. "I think we are doing the same thing now with P2P, particularly because there are apps that make this more easy to accomplish in today's environment."

The other benefit of P2P technology is that it allows users to send funds more easily across the country. "Cash is the purest form of a real-time transaction but the problem is we are not always in the same room," she said.

To learn more, listen to the podcast.