- Key insights: Banks have an opportunity to improve user experience for P2P payments.
- What's at stake: Most P2P rails are fragmented, creating frustration for users.
- Forward look: There is a broader urgency around immediate fund availability in consumers' day-to-day financial lives.
Consumers are frustrated by the fragmented peer-to-peer (P2P) payment landscape, according to a survey by American Banker's Market Intelligence team.
Seventy five percent of respondents want payment apps to work seamlessly together, while 57% maintain multiple apps just to reach different recipients. The friction doesn't end with managing multiple logins; it extends to the cost of moving money. Despite the promise of faster payments, most consumers are still stuck regularly paying instant transfer fees.
Because banks already hold the infrastructure, the regulatory trust and the capital, they have a prime opportunity to enhance the payment frequency and interoperability consumers want.
More key findings
- 65% of P2P app owners hold more than one P2P app.
- 35% of P2P users hit instant-transfer fees always or often.
- 36% of employees want to be paid more frequently.
- 18% of consumers have abandoned a transaction because of unexpected fees.
American Banker's Market Intelligence team surveyed 1,000 individual U.S. consumers through May and June to gauge their payment habits and how they engage with certain types of technology. We sought to better glean the average consumer's perception, understanding, and usage of nontraditional payment provider products; this includes on-chain technology like cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, specifically as a payment mechanism, and digital peer-to-peer payment apps by well-known nonbanks.
In addition to interoperability, fees, and speed, the survey identified two other dominant themes that will be addressed in separate reports over the coming weeks. The second report will explore the current niche nature of digital currency and what would influence consumer uptake; and the third report will cover cross-border money movement, which are conducted primarily on P2P apps, surprisingly not via remittance specialists.
This report focuses on the P2P frictions. While both P2P payment providers and on-chain products have grown substantially, transaction data is limited. Many of the firms offering these products face different oversight, which means they do not have to report transactions the same way as traditional payment providers. Only publicly traded P2P payment apps are required to report payment data to the SEC, but even then data is not reported in a consistent or standardized format. As such, understanding how the U.S. consumer is engaging with digital payments is a fragmented, unclear, and often complex picture to capture.
American Banker's Market Intelligence team sought to map how consumers in the U.S. are engaging with these nonbank P2P apps and on-chain payment products, and if they appropriately understand how this technology functions.
INTEROPERABILITY
The majority, if not all, of digital wallet and payment apps are not interoperable and are closed loop networks. Users must subscribe and store deposits across multiple platforms because funds cannot be sent from one app to another (i.e., Venmo cannot transact with CashApp). The only P2P apps that are interoperable are PayPal and Venmo because Venmo is a subsidiary of PayPal, and this occurred only last year. This structural isolation forces consumers to adapt by juggling multiple accounts simply to interact with different people in their networks.
Survey results confirm this, with 65% of respondents of P2P app owners holding more than one P2P app. The reason for this is reach, cited by 57% of multi-app owners. This same gap shows up as friction: 24% of P2P users say "recipient or sender isn't on the same app I have" impacts them always or often.
Additionally, the number of P2P apps help is inversely related to age. The younger demographics are multi-app, with 75% of Gen Z and 72% of Millennials holding two or more P2P apps, and 43% of Gen Z maintaining three or more applications (30% using three apps and 13% using four or more).
In contrast, single-app usage increases steadily with age, peaking among Boomers, where 62% rely on only a single provider and just 13% hold three or more. Gen X occupies a transitional middle ground, with 73% using either one app (34%) or two apps (39%). Overall, these findings highlight that while younger cohorts actively navigate fragmented digital wallets, older consumers prefer consolidating their P2P activity within a single platform, or choose to not opt in to more apps.
When asked to agree or disagree with nine statements about their financial lives, consumers put cross-platform payments above every concern except money-management confidence, with 75% agreeing that they wish different payment apps could work together. This was followed closely by worrying about fraud (73%) and far ahead of the view that their bank's technology is outdated (24%).
Gen Z leads the demand for payment app interoperability at 87%, with Millennials (86%) and Gen X (81%) close behind. Unsurprisingly, consumers who send cross-border payments often or occasionally show high demand for seamless app integration (86% and 85%, respectively). However, 72% of consumers who never send cross-border payments also want app interoperability. Because this group represents a much larger total sample size (737 compared to 275), their 72% share reflects a significant number of users. It shows that the payment app fragmentation pain point spans across all digital payment users, whether domestic or international.
Meanwhile, the data showed that PayPal continues to lead consumer preference in the P2P market, holding a leading 35% share, while Cash App trails as a strong second at 28%.
PayPal's market supremacy stems largely from its first-mover advantage and widely held consumer trust. Originally founded as a web-first checkout solution designed to reduce friction for online merchants and shoppers, the platform has systematically expanded its core value proposition. Over the past two decades, PayPal transformed from a basic transaction intermediary into a multi-faceted financial ecosystem with the goal of becoming a 'super-app.' Beyond facilitating peer transfers, it now allows users to maintain digital balances, access high-yield savings options, manage cross-border payments, and check out securely across millions of global retailers.
FEE/COST:
App fragmentation is only part of the equation; when examining the specific pain points driving this friction across all transaction types, financial cost consistently tops the list.
Broadly, the friction consumers report most is price. Instant-transfer fees are the top P2P problem: 35% of users hit them always or often, high transaction fees lead the cross-border problems at 38%, and unexpected transaction fees top the list of reasons consumers walked away from a purchase or payment in the past year, at 18% - tied with intrusive data requests at 18%.
This is an interesting contrast compared to the data presented earlier, which notes that only 24% say their bank's technology feels outdated.
SPEED
Cost friction is directly correlated with the speed of payments. A closer look at these price-related friction points reveals that cost and transaction velocity are deeply intertwined.
An interesting component of P2P apps is the perceived speed of payments. The majority of these payments, while they may feel instantaneous from the user perspective, are not actually instantaneous. For example, Venmo will update the ledger on the user-side but true settlement doesn't happen for a few days, because Venmo often uses ACH. To get funds instantly through Venmo, users have to choose the "instant payment" option, which has an additional fee associated with it. This is because the real-time payment method costs more per payment (to use the RTP rail), and Venmo must manage higher fraud risks and front the liquidity to make funds available in minutes.
This trade-off between speed and cost isn't just an issue for casual transfers, it reflects a much broader urgency around immediate fund availability in consumers' day-to-day financial lives.
People want their money sooner, especially workers. Just 26% of workers are totally satisfied with how they're paid now. Asked what they would change about how they get paid, the top three wishes have to do with having their money when they need it: 36% want to be paid more frequently, 30% want instant access to wages as they earn them, and 30% want to choose their own pay schedule.
"Better integration between my pay and my financial apps or accounts" finishes last of the seven changes offered, at 14%. Asked which pay methods are unavailable to them but wanted, employees name cash most often (16%), followed by an early wage access app such as DailyPay or Even (14%).
Ecosystem Impact
With more P2P payment options than ever before, the average consumer operates in a complex and fragmented ecosystem. Additionally, stablecoins and cryptocurrencies also lack interoperability, operating on different blockchains and by different issuers.
Whether juggling platforms to split a bill or paying a fee to access earned wages early, users are actively seeking seamless, cost-effective liquidity. Solving this speed-versus-cost conundrum will define the next generation of digital payment leaders.
Read more:
What comes next for banks in a post-CLARITY Congress Warsh: Rising bond yields a sign of strong U.S. economy Borrowing from Federal Home Loan banks jumped 20% in 2Q State bank examiners get a playbook for inspecting AI
Resolving these domestic P2P pain points is critical, but it represents only one part of our survey findings. Next week, we'll dive into the second Data Report to uncover why crypto has yet to break into mainstream commerce as a real-world payment mechanism, before concluding our series with a look at how nonbank apps are reshaping cross-border money movement.
Methodology: The On-Chain Consumer Survey 2026 was fielded by American Banker's Market Intelligence team among 1,000 U.S. consumers in May-June 2026.
Quota design: The sample is balanced cellwise to the U.S. census by gender and age, and to the overall white non-Hispanic share. Composition within the non-white/Hispanic group was not quota-controlled and departs from census: Black respondents are over-represented and Hispanic respondents under-represented. Figures are unweighted. Race, ethnicity and region results describe this sample and should not be read as national estimates.
Conditional bases used throughout: employed respondents n=600 (Q19–Q22); uses a P2P app n=844 (Q15–Q16); owns at least one P2P app n=582 (Q7); sends money internationally n=275 (Q17–Q18); holds cryptocurrency n=263 (Q26–Q27); has a primary checking account n=778 (Q10).
