A consumer study published by Decta has found that banking and payment app chatbots resolve blocked payment issues in just 11.4% of cases, with negative reviews rising 55% year on year across Europe.
The study, which combined a consumer survey with two years of European app store review data, focused on what it terms the 'block-and-bot experience', the sequence in which a payment, transfer, or transaction is blocked or declined, and the chatbot interaction that typically follows. The two failure points are measured together because they rarely occur in isolation: one routinely leads into the other.
Consumers routed to chatbots despite preferring human support
Survey data from the 1.162 affected users showed that, despite the majority initially seeking human assistance, most ended up interacting with automated systems regardless. While 56.6% selected in-app human chat as their first port of call and only 12.0% chose a chatbot directly, 76.3% had dealt with a chatbot by the end of the resolution process. Only 19.2% managed to speak exclusively to a human throughout.
Consumer sentiment around AI-assisted support remains firmly negative. Just 5.4% of respondents said they trusted a chatbot to resolve a financial problem, against 65.2% who wanted a human agent, representing a ratio of roughly 12 to one.
Resolution failures and transaction abandonment
Of users routed through a chatbot during a blocked-payment resolution, 50.0% were subsequently escalated to a human agent, and 14.9% received no resolution at all. Meanwhile, 48% of users whose payments were blocked reported that the transaction was ultimately abandoned, with those users forced to find an alternative payment method.
The findings also highlight a structural gap in how resolution rates are currently reported across the industry. Fintechs typically track fraud-block rates internally without measuring downstream resolution outcomes. Chatbot providers, in turn, report deflection rates without verifying whether the underlying problem was actually solved. By measuring both dimensions in a single study, the research surfaces what the authors describe as the combined failure from the customer's perspective.
Rising complaint volumes signal broader pressure on app-based support
The 55.49% year-on-year increase in negative app store reviews citing chatbots across Europe's ten largest banking and payment apps suggests the issue is gaining visibility among consumers and may increasingly inform app ratings and store rankings. Moreover, for providers operating in a competitive retail banking and payments environment, the data points to reputational and retention implications that extend beyond individual support interactions.
