AI-powered tools are reshaping how people bank and pay. Vulnerable customers are among the strongest adopters of digital banking and AI-enabled services, yet new research from The Payments Association’s (TPA) Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) sub-working group suggests they are not benefiting equally from them.
The findings reveal a clear gap between adoption and outcomes. While vulnerable customers engage with digital banking at similar rates to other consumers, they are more than three times as likely to leave a banking or payment task incomplete because a digital or AI-powered tool did not work for them.
For firms, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity: those that design AI-powered tools around the needs of vulnerable customers stand to strengthen trust, improve customer outcomes, meet Consumer Duty expectations and serve a wider market more effectively.
