Introducing Pay by Bank for Bill Pay: Higher adoption, fewer returns

Brian Dammeir
Brian has helped companies around the world optimize their payment strategies. Now he wants to make Pay by Bank a seamless part of payment experiences.

Paying bills directly from a bank account is already common for utilities. But let’s be honest: the typical experience leaves much to be desired—finding your checkbook, manual entry of account numbers, delays for verification, and an overall clunky user experience. For your business, this translates to lower use, possible fraud, more failed payments, and less cost savings. 

Pay by Bank for Bill Pay is designed to help businesses capitalize on the opportunity of bank payments by providing a more seamless, cost-effective, and secure way for consumers to pay directly from their bank accounts, all powered by Plaid’s network solutions. Higher adoption means even greater cost savings for your business—up to 40% lower processing costs compared to cards. Intelligent risk assessment means fewer returns for all types of recurring payments, including insurance, rent and mortgage, mobile phone, digital subscriptions, and more. 

Bringing the power of the Plaid network to billers

Plaid provides the most widely used and trusted network across digital financial services. More than 1 in 3 U.S. adults with a bank account have connected via Plaid. That network helps power intelligent remembered experiences that make signing up for services easier, enables faster payments, and provides greater risk protection for both businesses and consumers. For bank payments, the Plaid network enables us to deliver high-converting experiences—up to 80% higher payment success rates—and underpins our risk and insights products to secure transactions, reduce returns, and prevent fraud.

Increasing adoption, lowering returns, and preventing fraud

Every company is looking to grow and lower costs. Getting more customers to pay directly with their bank account for more types of payments is a clear way to do both. In fact, when we combine a great user experience with optimal verification and intelligent risk assessment, Pay by Bank for Bill Pay can deliver a more reliable experience than cards. 

Increasing adoption: Studies have shown that most consumers don’t know their bank account and routing numbers and the manual entry experience delivers poor success rates. Plaid has optimized the user experience for consumer choice for bank payments with embedded experiences into your payment flows. Plaid provides both market-leading authentication through online banking and traditional account and routing number validation in the background. There’s no need to stitch together multiple vendors, so no matter how the user prefers to pay with their bank account, Plaid’s end-to-end Pay by Bank solution can securely accept it. Plaid Pay by Bank is available across all channels: online, in-app, in-store, and hosted contact center solutions.

Plaid Link is embedded in the payment page, letting users select or search for their bank without leaving the experience.

Remembered users in the Plaid Network enjoy one-click experiences, boosting payment conversion

Lowering returns: One challenge billers deal with is balancing adoption with the risks associated with bank payments, namely predicting and responding to bank returns. Plaid's risk engine, Signal, which is embedded into Plaid Pay by Bank, uses machine-learning-driven network insights so you don’t have to worry about failed payments, closed accounts, or insufficient funds. In fact, Plaid’s solution decreases NSFs on first payments by up to 80% among some early customers. It optimizes for approvals during the payment flow, and Signal even provides insights about when to retry failed payments, dramatically cutting down on churn and contact center inquiries.

Preventing fraud: Plaid’s solution also helps prevent payment fraud before a transaction takes place by using machine learning to detect abnormal transaction patterns and flag potential fraud in real-time. It analyzes network behavioral data from linked bank accounts, such as account linking activity and contact information changes, to identify signs of fraudulent activity before payments are processed. Additionally, Plaid Signal provides risk scores, attributes, and customizable risk rules. This allows businesses to flag transactions that exhibit suspicious behavior, enhancing fraud detection while reducing unauthorized payments.

An end-to-end solution for billers

Pay by Bank for Bill Pay is available and already in use by early customers in telecommunications, property management, insurance, automotive and more. For example, Domuso, a digital payment platform transforming the way the multifamily industry collects and manages rent, has integrated the new bill pay experience into its digital payments platform that offers certified payment options, including ACH.

Pay by Bank for Bill Pay will help drive greater adoption of bank-based payments across more types of recurring payments – giving your customers more flexibility in how they pay and driving greater savings for your business. Pay by Bank for Bill Pay is provided as an all-in-one solution, including processing, or you can integrate with your existing payment processor such as Adyen, Nuvei, Checkout, Dwolla, and more.

Contact us today to learn more.