How consumers paid their bills wasn’t much of a priority for businesses. As long as they got paid, they were happy. But bill pay isn't invisible anymore. It’s a defining part of the customer experience and utilities need to take note of where that experience is evolving.
Payment behavior is shifting on two fronts: where customers choose to pay and how they want to pay once they're there. Both carry consequences for utilities that aren't paying attention. Here are five trends reshaping the bill pay landscape in 2026 and beyond.
Trend one — Owned digital channels have become the default
Research shows that 60% of utility customers pay through their utility's own logged-in channel, making it the default expectation rather than a nice-to-have.
As owned digital channels have become dominant, legacy channels are collapsing. Only 21% of consumers use bank bill pay, 7% use guest payments, 4% use traditional mail, 3% use phone payments and 2% use in-person payments. Even combined, these channels don't touch what the owned digital channel commands alone.
When most of the customer relationship lives in your digital channel, its speed and design aren't just UX details; they're a competitive risk if you get them wrong. That dominance is shaped by what customers can actually do once they're there, like paying with a digital wallet or a credit card, or, increasingly, asking for more flexible terms. Here's where those preferences are headed.
Trend two — Digital wallets have moved from niche to mainstream for bills
Digital wallets are already part of consumers’ everyday payment habits, with 61% using them for general purchases. The momentum is showing up in the overall numbers. Forty-two percent of consumers have now used a digital wallet to pay a bill, up from 37% in 2022.
The competitive landscape within wallets is shifting fast. PayPal still edges out Apple Pay among digital wallet users (61% vs. 59%), but that gap has nearly closed. Apple Pay's usage has almost doubled since 2022 and may soon attain category leadership.
Multi-wallet support, not single-provider integration, is now table stakes. Fifty-nine percent of wallet users manage two or more wallets, so offering just one provider means missing a real share of them.
Trend three — Awareness is the real adoption bottleneck, not availability
If you build it, they will come — if they know about it. Only 24% of customers know they can pay their utility bill using a digital wallet. And 52% don’t know either way. That split is telling. The barrier isn’t building capacity as much as communicating that it exists.
Demand isn’t the problem. Fifty percent of customers say they'd consider using a digital wallet for utility payments in the future. This means this isn’t necessarily a technology gap, but a communication problem, making the adoption ceiling easier to fix.
Trend four — Credit cards remain a steady, selective channel
Paying utility bills with credit cards isn’t new, but it remains a solid payment channel. Forty-two percent of consumers use credit cards for utility bills, behind subscriptions (59%) and internet/phone (54%). Those who already use or are likely to use credit cards for bill payments account for about 65% of consumers, indicating a stable channel.
Credit cards are the steady middle of the channel mix, not growing fast, but not going anywhere. For 66%, rewards and cashback are the drivers, and therefore, the lever utilities have to grow this channel further.
Trend five — Early interest in flexible payment options is real
In these tough economic times, it’s not surprising that 37% of utility customers value future flexibility options like installment plans or buy now, pay later (BNPL). Separately, 40% of consumers are interested in, somewhat interested in, or already using BNPL for bill payments.
BNPL is a channel to watch. Not yet mainstream for bills, but a growing niche utilities shouldn't ignore as economic pressure keeps flexibility top of mind.
What's at stake for utilities
These trends mark a strategic inflection point. Utilities that don't adapt risk losing revenue, higher call center costs and brand erosion. Those that modernize payment options and communications position themselves as trusted providers.
Channel mix is diversifying on customer momentum, not utility push, driven by habits from other bills. Utilities that proactively promote existing options, especially wallets (where awareness lags demand), can capture adoption that's sitting on the table. Staying quiet just leaves that differentiation on the table while customer expectations, shaped by every other bill they pay, keep rising.
