The news: Many traditional banks think of bill pay as a basic utility feature—built once and rarely updated. Meanwhile, fintechs have transformed bill payment into a customer acquisition and engagement tool, creating a major competitive gap, per The Financial Brand.

How we got here: According to Datos Insights, 76% of banking customers pay bills directly on billers’ websites, while just 22% use banks’ bill-pay features. That’s because the limitations of bill pay—including “limited information about the biller and how the biller wants to get paid”—cause delays in payments showing up in billers’ systems.

Why this matters: We already know that fintechs are outpacing traditional financial institutions (FIs) in new account openings, but that alone wasn’t alarming—because users could have been searching for specific features offered by fintechs and not their banks, while still keeping much of their banking activity with FIs. However, companies like Rocket Money, Chime, and Credit Karma have been prioritizing and using bill and subscription management to: