WALTHAM, Mass.—Resistance to P2P services is waning, as many of the reasons for not using the solution appear to be losing popularity, a new study reveals.
The largest overall reason in 2018 for declining to use person-to-person payments–“I don’t have a reason to use P2P–declined to 36% in 2020 from 47% in 2018. In 2019, 42% of consumers said they “prefer to use cash” over P2P services, according to a Mercator Advisory group report—2020 North American Payments Insights: Debit - Continued Change.
“Not surprisingly in a pandemic environment, that sentiment dipped to 30% in 2020,” Payments Journal stated in its analysis.
P2P services are increasingly being used to share costs with others, pay bills, and pay for things in-stores.
In 2020, 23% of consumers used P2P to split a bill, up from 17% in 2018 and 2019. For the last three years, one in five P2P consumers used the service to buy a gift.