Over the past year, the pandemic has created a sense of urgency for innovation of all kinds. Restaurants have enabled contactless ordering and payments, QR code menus, and curbside pickup. Schools have adopted virtual learning to allow students to study from home. The wellness sector has embraced fitness apps, livestreaming, and on-demand workouts. Healthcare saw not only the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines, but also innovations in data collection apps and the rapid shift to telehealth appointments.

The financial services industry has also been a part of this change. Digital payments, which include account-to-account (A2A) transfers, gained a new level of appeal in a Covid-conscious world. Anything that can be done digitally, will be.

To learn more about why digital account-to-account (A2A) transfers are growing and why that matters, PaymentsJournal sat down with Derek Swords, VP of Product Management at Fiserv, and Sarah Grotta, Director of Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.

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Necessity is the mother of innovation

Driven in part by the pandemic, consumers are increasingly moving toward online and mobile payments. While this trend was in evidence prior to COVID-19, the pandemic influenced further consumer adoption of digital services. “As they say, innovation is often driven by situations and solving real-world problems. This is no different,” explained Swords.

The pandemic added what Swords referred to as an “exclamation point” to digital payments growth.

The growth of A2A transfers 

Over the past 12 months, Fiserv has seen overall A2A transfer transactions increase by 19%. “We’ve seen ongoing growth in the leveraging of digital methods of moving money from one account to another year-over-year. That’s been a consistent story, and we have certainly seen some spikes along the way,” Swords added. This growth is illustrated in the graphic below, provided by Fiserv:

“Clearly, people have needed to move money in the past and… we’ve had maybe less efficient ways of doing that. So now we want this to be a more digital experience,” said Grotta.

Now, the ability to transfer funds between accounts at different institutions is quickly becoming a must-have offering for the online-banking experience. Many consumers bank with both a primary and secondary institution, and the interfirm moving of funds should be a seamless process.