Dive Brief:
- The use of payment options like Venmo, PayPal Holdings and Zelle declined in popularity among midsize businesses, according to a Citizens Bank payments survey.
- The yearly survey of business leaders, published in June, said 70% reported using business-to-consumer payment alternatives that include PayPal, Venmo and Zelle, a drop of 14 percentage points from the 2024 survey of midsize.
- The survey also found that check use is still ubiquitous, in spite of recent warnings that checks are prone to theft and fraud. About a fourth of the businesses surveyed by Citizens said checks are “critical” for paying vendors, while 39% said checks are an “important but not critical” way to pay vendors.
Dive Insight:
For corporate treasury professionals responding to the Citizens survey, instant payments were the most popular payment form, with 73% saying they used it. Meanwhile, the business-to-consumer alternatives were the second most popular and checks were least popular, with 47% reporting use.
“We’re still in paper processing mode,” Michael Cummins, Citizens’ head of treasury solutions, said in a webinar on the survey results. “We still have industries that are heavily checked.”
Citizens polled 315 owners and executives at non-bank U.S. companies with annual revenue between $5 million and $1 billion for its 2025 survey. The research was conducted from March 3 to 14.
The scope of the survey changed between 2024 and 2025, including more small businesses this year. Last year, Citizens surveyed 202 business leaders from companies with annual revenue between $50 million and $1 billion.
In any case, the survey also includes some businesses that the Census Bureau considers to be small, with it’s definition for that category ranging between $1 million and $40 million.
This is the fourth year the bank has conducted the payments survey, and the popularity of payment alternatives such as Venmo, PayPal and Zelle had risen each prior year, before peaking in 2024.
The 2025 survey didn't offer any insight into the falling popularity of the above-mentioned payment services among survey respondents.
Fraud concerns are top-of-mind for businesses, according to the Citizens report. While Zelle says that the vast majority of transactions on its platform are completed without a report of scams or fraud, the service has been in the cross-hairs of consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers over fraud concerns in recent years.
A spokesperson for EWS cast doubt on the results.
“Anyone drawing sweeping conclusions, opining on, or writing about a 315-person perception survey that lumps Zelle, PayPal and Venmo together might want to check the fine print before declaring a trend because the vast majority of small businesses in this country don’t fit into the category sampled and we’ve continued to see extremely strong engagement from consumers and small businesses that rely on Zelle for speed and certainty,” the EWS spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The spokesperson did not immediately respond to a message seeking more clarity on why most small businesses don’t fit the scope of the survey.
Zelle’s website notes that consumer use of the payment platform has tripled in the past three years.
Spokespeople for PayPal and Venmo, which is owned by PayPal, did not respond to requests for comment.
The popularity of instant payments made on platforms such as RTP and FedNow also declined in popularity among businesses, according to the survey. In 2025, 73% of businesses reported using instant payments, compared to 77% in 2024.
