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Insights and Expertise

Assessing banking and payment strategies

with non-financial KPIs

silient the structure is against risk events.

If payment and banking flows are poorly structured, the
first warning signs are already visible in the KPIs. The
problem is that the ones reading them often do not know
where to look.

Here I will list, other than the obvious, the cost KPIs. Based
on my personal experience, ignoring these non-financial
KPIs can cost far more than the financial ones, but they
happen more often than we might think.

1. The customer experience KPI

Customer experience KPIs tell a simple story: how
smoothly payments integrate into the user journey, and
where friction turns into lost revenue. But behind these
metrics there are deeper signals we should all pay closer
attention to.
By Viktoria Soltesz • Payment abandonment rate versus conversion: A
PSP Angels company may show strong overall conversion on its
sales funnel but struggle with payment abandon-
usinesses are conscious that every small ment. When cart completion is high while payment
amendment and tweak can turn healthy mar- drop-offs remain elevated or volatile, this is rarely
gins into painful losses or push a scaling busi- accidental. It often signals confusing checkout flows,
B ness into a serious liquidity crisis. We live in a limited payment methods, slow authorization times,
world of innovation, expansion, new products and new unclear descriptors on statements or even technical
markets, which are always at the center of every strategic glitches in mobile responsiveness.
discussion.
Revenue can look promising at the top of the fun-
However, for some unknown reason, building a payment nel, but the related cash may evaporate if customers
and banking strategy is still ignored, and payments and abandon due to outdated UX or unsupported local
banking are still considered a back-office function of fi- wallets. This gap increases churn pressure and dis-
nance.
torts growth projections.
Every business has faced problems with payments and If a payment gateway lacks seamless integration for
banking at least once, but hardly any professionals know preferred methods like QR codes or open banking,
how to resolve them, simply because the ones who man- the KPIs will not clearly reflect this restriction. The
age payment and banking tasks are not adequately trained customer experience metrics, however, will imme-
to do so. Key areas, such as how payments and banking diately show tightening engagement.
affect technology, UX, compliance and other essential as-
pects in a business are absent from accounting, economics Many organizations interpret this as a marketing
courses, and MBAs. problem. But in reality, marketers are usually not
trained in alternative payment methods, dynamic
Payment and banking today impact customer experience, routing, cross-border UX adaptations or API-driven
risk management, technology, product development, data checkout structures. The root cause is often embed-
security, compliance, finance and more. It should be con- ded in the payment architecture itself, not in user
sidered a standalone function, an essential element of the acquisition at all.
business strategy, not just a part of finance.
• Rising customer complaints on payments: If pay-
But unfortunately, today only a few organizations deliber- ment-related complaints grow faster than transac-
ately choose and interpret KPIs to diagnose whether their tion volume, it is necessary to question why satisfac-
payment and banking setup is truly effective, and how re- tion is not aligning with scale. Slow settlements vis-

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