AI Chatbots in Banking Apps Resolve Blocked Payments Just 11% of the Time, According to a New Study
4 June 2026
A new study by DECTA, a payment infrastructure company, has determined the disconnect between the presence of AI chatbots and their effectiveness in resolving banking app issues.
Based on a survey of 1,506 consumers and an analysis of 159,600 app store reviews of the 10 most-used banking and payment apps in Europe, including Revolut, Monzo, Wise, N26, and Starling Bank, chatbots successfully resolved payment issues in only 11.4% of cases. Half of the users (50%) of these apps had to escalate to a human agent to resolve their issue, while 14.9% of users reported that the chatbot did not ultimately provide any resolution to their issue.
Furthermore, a review of 34,167 one- and two-star app store reviews revealed a 55.49% year-on-year growth in the number of negative reviews blaming the chatbots in these apps.
Of the 1,506 consumers surveyed by DECTA, only 5.4% of users trust AI chatbots to resolve their banking app problems, as compared to 65.2% who trust a human agent. Furthermore, 48% of users who encountered a blocked payment said that the transaction never went through at all, and 10% attempted to complete the transaction on a different banking and financial technology (FinTech) app. A total of 76.3% of users said they encountered the chatbot while experiencing their banking app problem, despite the fact that 56.6% of those users attempted to contact a human agent prior to contacting the chatbot.
What the complaints reveal
Within the review complaints that blamed the banking app chatbots for the users' problems, 57% of complaints were related to four main categories:- Identity verification issues (16.85%)
- Declined transactions (16.09%)
- Login and access problems (12.74%)
- Account suspensions (11.23%)