Mobile Texts Have Changed How Consumers Make Payments

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The invisible line separating communication from commerce is dissolving. Messaging platforms are no longer merely for social interaction but have become a fertile frontier for payments and deeply integrated customer engagement.

Nick Babinsky, Chief Product Officer of Solutions by Text, a messaging software platform specializing in consumer finance, told PYMNTS that consumers are primed to embrace new ways of getting commerce done.

This evolution is not confined to a specific demographic but is a broad societal trend, driven by the ubiquitous integration of conversational interfaces into daily life. Consumers across all socioeconomic and age brackets are accustomed to interacting with artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as Alexa and Siri, or simply texting friends, family and colleagues.

No Longer Interested in Portals

“There’s less interest amongst all of us in using a set of credentials to log into a portal, or visiting a branch location or calling in and talking to a call center agent,” he told PYMNTS.

He relayed to PYMNTS that studies have shown that roughly half of Gen Z and millennial consumers have said they’d leave their financial provider in the event they were not able to resolve account level issues via text.

The growing consumer demand for mobile tools is exerting pressure on financial institutions. Solutions by Text, which serves banks, FinTech lenders and business process outsourcing (BPO) agencies, aims to enhance consumer engagement for these entities, fostering compliant conversations that ultimately lead to conversion.

Babinsky elaborated on what constitutes conversion in this context: “Conversion to us can be a few different things. It could mean signing up for an offer, a new loan product, a new account with a provider.”

He added that text-based interactions could be leveraged in resolving a customer complaint or question, or critically, making a payment, signing up for a payment plan or enabling an autopay feature.

Addressing the Challenges

However, the transition to a mobile-first, conversational future is not without its hurdles, primarily centered on trust and security.

The proliferation of fraudulent text messages, often disguised as legitimate requests from authorities or financial institutions, has bred skepticism among consumers and providers alike regarding the safety and security of texting for financial matters.

“Mobile is top of mind for everybody, but it’s not without channel challenge,” Babinsky said to PYMNTS. “We all get those text messages that ask, ‘Did you pay the toll authority? Click here now.’” 

To counter this skepticism and build trust, innovations are underway, notably the adoption of Rich Communication Services (RCS). RCS represents the “next frontier” beyond traditional SMS and MMS, a protocol now supported by all major carriers including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile as of Q2 2025.

“These messages come with the bank or the FinTech’s logo. They’ve got a check mark verified by Google. There’s no phone number,” Babinsky said. “It just says the name of the business. You may start seeing these messages come from the likes of Walgreens and Wayfair and Verizon. We’re leading the charge for consumer finance to bring these safe, secure messages that are rich and engaging — and address the trust issue.”

Beyond technology, Babinsky stressed the importance of strategic best practices, such as financial institutions sending texts from their primary service numbers and embedding virtual contact cards (vCards) so customers can easily save and recognize the sender. This simple yet practical approach helps customers associate the phone number with the brand, fostering trust and improving engagement.

Submerging Payments

At the core of Solutions by Text’s strategy is the concept of “submerging payments,” an endeavor that stems from Babinsky’s extensive background in embedded payments at Billtrust.

This approach prioritizes making the payment experience so seamless and integral to the customer interaction that the consumer barely perceives it as a separate step.

“It’s less so about how elegant the software is that we can build that facilitates a payment. It’s mostly about, ‘How can we submerge the payments experience?’ so that when a consumer is interacting with the bank or the FinTech so they’re not even thinking about the payment as part of the experience,” Babinsky said. Uber stands out as a prime example.

The practical application of mobile-first strategies, particularly through text reminders, has yielded significant results, challenging traditional assumptions about consumer behavior.

Babinsky highlighted a startling statistic: “When introducing payment reminders over text to your consumer base, you’ll find that 40-50% of online portal payments are now occurring through a mobile device,” he said.

The shift resulted in dramatically improved days sales outstanding (DSO), better customer satisfaction scores and a rapid increase in the proportion of one-time payments converting to automatic or recurring payments.

In a competitive environment marked by rising interest rates and persistent pressure from FinTechs, conversational commerce offers a critical means for banks to differentiate themselves.

“What we’re hearing for bank executives is, ‘What can we do to break through the noise?’” Babinsky said, emphasizing that offering conversational options for payments, account opening, question resolution and mobile wallets is, in his opinion, “critical.”

Solutions by Text’s customers have grown by embracing mobile messaging.

“Most of our customers doubled their [message] volume in the first six months of working with us,” he said, attributing this success to the effectiveness of mobile messaging in achieving business goals and eliciting strong customer responses.

“We believe that real-time, compliant conversations lead to conversions, and that’s what Solutions by Text is all about,” he told PYMNTS.

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