Businesses can move money faster than ever before. However, their customers may still need to navigate a maze of messages, gateways, passwords and payments pages before that money can start moving. This disconnect creates a largely invisible revenue leak for consumer lenders, utilities and other businesses that depend on it It is repeated Customer payments.
“Payments are not the point. Transfer is,” Sean CurtisGeneral Manager of Payments at SBThe told PYMNTS during a conversation for PYMNTS’ 2026 Original Series “Summer School.”
The problem isn’t necessarily that customers don’t want to pay, don’t know what they owe or can’t get another reminder. The problem is that the path from deciding to pay to completing the transaction remains unnecessarily difficult.
“If it’s too much to pay off this loan, I’ll remember that next time I need another loan,” Curtis said. “Application fatigue is real.”
More reminders can’t fix a broken payment journey
When payment rates are disappointing, many organizations respond by increasing the volume of emails, calls, messages, and texts. The strategy treats groups as a problem of consciousness. Remind customers often enough, and eventually they will pay.
“More volume means more noise,” Curtis said. “It doesn’t actually eliminate friction.”
The practical solution is more obvious. Keep customers in the flow and allow them to pay the moment they decide to act.
“The greatest breakdown occurs between intention and action,” he said. When customers have to “switch channels, log in, and take a bunch of extra steps, each of those actions results in some natural drop in the payment funnel.”
This is the hidden weakness of many collection strategies. Notification may work perfectly. You may reach the right customer at the right moment with the right credit, but if the next step requires five minutes, a password reset, or a separate application, the company has created a new opportunity to let go.
“They can send me all the reminders they want,” Curtis said, but when companies repeatedly direct customers into poor workflows, especially ones they already know will be inconvenient, the reminders face diminishing returns.
“Payments aren’t just a back-end function anymore,” Curtis said. “It’s part of the user experience.”
Texting captures the moment of intention
Seamless checkout won’t necessarily create a memorable customer interaction. A bad one will almost certainly do it. Text payments are gaining momentum because SMS can shorten this distance. Instead of using a message to simply tell customers that a payment is due, businesses can turn the message itself into the beginning of the transaction.
“Text messaging is so effective because it meets the consumer’s needs at the moment of intent,” Curtis said. “It’s quick, easy, confidential and even more discreet.”
Curtis said phone calls don’t simply create more friction. They can become a “kind of social blocker” when clients don’t want their colleagues or others around them to hear the conversation.
But text messages only improve conversion when they allow the customer to act without being pushed into another cumbersome channel. A text that leads to an app download, account registration, or lengthy portal experience may attract attention and still cause you to lose the transaction. Therefore, opportunity is not a reminder text. It is a text to complete.
A portfolio can’t fix a funnel in nine clicks
Apple Pay and Google Pay It can enhance this experience by eliminating the need to find a card and manually enter payment credentials.
However, Curtis cautioned against treating wallet acceptance as a substitute for basic flight redesign.
“Digital wallets “It’s a big accelerator in itself, but it’s not a strategy,” he said.
He described a tool whose customers have to make nine clicks between receiving a payment reminder and getting to the point where they can use Apple Pay. The wallet may facilitate the ninth step. It does nothing to remove the first octet.
The example illustrates a broader error in Digital transformation. Companies often add a modern payment option to an old operating process and call the result an innovation. But the customer still experiences the entire journey, not just the checkout button at the end.
Trust begins before the link arrives
Reducing clicks creates another challenge. A direct payments link may be convenient, but consumers have also been trained to treat unexpected links with suspicion.
“Trust starts where the order is actually placed,” Curtis said.
Businesses can use richer messaging with branding, logos and contextual information, but Curtis said credibility must be established even before that. When customers sign up, businesses can indicate which number will call them, provide a digital calling card and tell them that future messages may include payment requests.
This makes trust more than just a matter of compliance. It becomes part of the conversion design. Customers must recognize the sender and believe the request is legitimate before the speed of the transaction can matter.
a witness FULL PYMNTS INTERVIEW With SBT’s Managing Director of Payments, Sean Curtis, to learn more about:
- Why is payment friction a hidden revenue leak? Every login, channel switch, and additional click between a customer’s intent to pay and a completed transaction increases abandonment, Curtis said.
- How converting text to pay can bring you faster cash flow. More reminders can’t fix a broken payments journey, and enabling customers to pay directly from a reliable message can improve completion rates.
- Why have payments become part of the customer experience? Wallets alone can’t fix a cumbersome conversion funnel, and simple, recognizable payment interactions can boost trust, customer retention, and customer lifetime value.
