Making people click more than 3 times to pay can cost you the payment

The easiest bill to pay may be the one that gets paid first. In a Q2 2026 survey of 2,000 US consumers, 36% said they had delayed a payment because the process was too complicated.

What the study found

About 2 in 5 consumers cannot pay every obligation on time, so bills compete for a spot in the payment line. People still weigh the impact of not paying, the due date and other factors. But when bills look about equal, ease matters most.

The magic number is 3. Consumers say that when paying takes more than three clicks, they give up and turn to a creditor with an easier way to pay. A hard process can turn intent into delay, delay into a missed deadline, and a missed deadline into repeated nonpayment.

Trust counts too. The study says people need confidence in three things:

• That they are paying the right organization
• That the payment request is legitimate
• That the way they are asked to pay can be trusted

What is not known

The summary does not say who ran the study or how a click was counted. It also gives no figures on how much money slow payments cost. The full study is titled The Competition for Consumer Payments.

For anyone who sends bills, the lesson is to aim for three clicks or fewer and make it clear the request is real.