Payer experience

Why is payer experience so important?

Payer experience (also known as customer experience or user experience) is the quality of the customer’s experience when using an open banking payment.

A poor payer experience can lead to your customer not choosing or abandoning the payment.

For customers to choose open banking payments over other available payment methods, your provider needs to take into account four key factors that affect your customers’ perception of an open banking payment:

1. Convenience: will this take long?

2. Clarity: what exactly do I need to do? Is it going to be difficult?

3. Familiarity: have I done this before? Do I recognise it?

4. Security: is this safe? Do I trust it?

They then need to navigate the open banking payment flow successfully. A completion of a started payment flow constitutes a conversion. Good UX practices can also increase the likelihood of a user completing the payment. Best practices for this include:

• 💡 avoid ambiguity

• 👀 be transparent

• ☝️ use common patterns and shortcuts

• ✏️ simplify complexities

It’s important to note that part of every open banking payment journey — the authorisation step — is dictated by the banks, rather than the provider you choose, and that standards set by governing bodies across Europe can lead to inconsistent user journeys.

But your provider should be able to advise you on how to build a high-performing payment journey, taking into account the nuances of different banks and different market standards across Europe, as well as the needs of your business. Your chosen provider should be able to help you with:

Tried-and-tested bank selection and consent screens

The two parts of the open banking payment flow that your provider will control are the bank selection and consent screens.

• Bank selection screen: the user chooses from a list of available banks (at which point they are redirected to that bank to authorise the payment).

• Consent screen: the user is informed of the information required of them to complete the payment process, and they give their consent.

Your provider should have tested and optimised screens for both of these parts of the payment flow, which meet regulatory requirements, and they should give you recommendations for your business and use case.

Expert advice on authentication flows across Europe

As we mentioned in Coverage, payment flows will differ across Europe, as banks apply different standards for UX during the authentication part of the flow. While your open banking payment provider can’t control these parts of the journey, they can advise you on what markets and banks have particular UX quirks, such as if a specific bank requires IBANs or specific error messages to be aware of. They should also advise on how to build your flows to account for these differences.

Your provider should also be in constant communication with banks and regulators, feeding back to them and lobbying for improvements.

High performing end-to-end payment or deposit flows

The parts of the payment flow controlled by your provider, the parts controlled by the bank and the parts controlled by your business (eg payment selection screens and success screens), combine to make the end-to-end payment or deposit flow.

While distinct, they naturally all work together to drive a user to complete a payment. Your provider should be able to advise on how to build a full flow that works effectively, removing ambiguity and complexity that would increase the chance of a payer dropping out of the flow.

Best practices for driving open banking adoption

Adding open banking payments to your payment page isn’t simply about what happens when a payer has chosen open banking. It’s equally important to ensure your customers understand what it is and what it offers them compared to other available payment methods.

A provider should be able to advise you on the language to use (ie what to call your payment method) and how to structure the hierarchy of your payment options to increase the share of checkout (the percentage of all a business’ payments transacted through open banking). This is particularly important if further open banking adoption drives down your costs and operational inefficiencies.

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"Take up of TrueLayer has been very positive. We now see around 25% of eligible payments going through bank transfer via TrueLayer."

Sitong Wei,

Product Manager