With the adoption and scale of digital money transfers and virtual currencies, customer complaints are on the rise. Thanks to the PositivityTech® intelligent platform, financial institutions access early indicators of the frictions that customers face — while their volume is still small — and can make improvements.
Consumers are complaining to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) about situations when their financial institutions may not be protecting them and their funds.
These situations include sophisticated scams and fraud in electronic fund transfers. While consumers may have “technically” authorized these transactions, they did not realize they were being scammed, and they need support from their financial institutions.
Zelle is one such digital transfer tool that has seen widespread adoption, with consumers and businesses sending almost half a trillion dollars with Zelle in 2021. Yet, according to Zelle’s website, it “does not offer a protection program for any authorized payments made with Zelle.”
In this FrameWork, we will explore:
- the recent rise in complaints about domestic money transfers and virtual currency,
- the issues that customers highlight in their complaints,
- the companies experiencing rising complaints about these issues, and
- the increase in monetary relief that institutions are providing due to complaints about money transfers or service, or virtual currency.
Complaints about domestic money transfers and virtual currency are on the rise — and are severe
In the visuals below, you can see that complaints about domestic money transfers and virtual currency have increased in 2021. In the last 90 days, domestic money transfers have continued to rise.
As you can see in the chart below, using PositivityTech’s proprietary Severity Score (indicating customers’ frustration), 20% of all domestic money transfer complaints are in the “high severity” range.
Domestic Money Transfers: What’s the issue?
In customer complaints about domestic money transfers, customers predominantly cite issues of fraud, transaction and service problems, and money not available when promised, as can be seen in the first visual below. The second visual shows that complaints about domestic money transfers customers blame on fraud or scams are on the rise.
Domestic Money Transfers: Which institution has the most complaints?
The following visuals show the five companies with the most customer complaints about digital money transfers, and indicate that these complaints to Wells Fargo are especially on the rise. Also, you can see a complaint from a Wells Fargo customer about fraud concerns with a digital money transfer.
Virtual Currency: What’s the issue?
Similar to domestic money transfer issues, customer complaints state that virtual currency issues are predominantly fraud, transaction and service problems, and money not available when promised, as seen in the following visual. In the second visual, you can see the increase of complaints about virtual currency issues that customers ascribe to fraud or scam.
Virtual Currency: Which institution has the most complaints?
The following visuals show the five companies with the most customer complaints about virtual currency, and indicate that, while Coinbase has the most complaints, complaints to Wells Fargo and Paypal are especially on the rise. These visuals are followed by two customer complaints to Coinbase — one which cites “other transaction problem,” which in one case refers to disparate treatment and in another case refers to a suggested targeted outage.
Monetary relief: A fast-growing resolution showcases risks of a still-small concern
Last year, less than 2% of all complaints submitted to the CFPB were about money transfer or service and virtual currency. In comparison, 11% of complaints resolved with monetary relief were about money transfer or service and virtual currency.
Remove your customers’ growing friction points now
It is critical that we understand and address customers’ friction points with our products and services while it’s still early. Using PositivityTech, you can identify leading indicators of customers’ growing problems — before they become major issues — and you can prevent them.