Even when consumers try to avoid AI customer service, they end up at it anyway. Of the 1,162 affected users, 56.6% chose in-app human chat as their first resort and only 12.0% picked the chatbot. But by the end of resolution, 76.3% had dealt with a chatbot at some point, three in four. Only 19.2% managed to speak to a human throughout.
Study
AI in Banking Apps: A Study on Blocked Payments and Chatbot Failure
A consumer study, measuring two failure points in how Europe's most-used banking and payment apps handle problems: how often users have a payment, transfer, or transaction blocked, declined, or paused by their app, and how often the chatbot they're sent to afterwards fails to resolve it.
Consumers don't trust AI with their money
Just 5.4% trust a chatbot to fix problems. 65.2% want a human. A 12-to-1 preference
Chatbots fail nine times out of ten
Only 11.4% of blocked-payment users say the chatbot actually resolved their issue
Half of blocked payments never happen
48% of affected users say the transaction died and they had to find another way to pay
Chatbot complaints are surging across Europe
Negative reviews blaming chatbots rose 55.49% year over year across Europe's 10 biggest money apps
The Chatbot Failure
76.3% of users with a blocked payment ended up dealing with a chatbot
The chatbot resolved the problem just 11.4% of the time
Of users routed through a chatbot during a blocked-payment resolution, only 11.4% say it actually solved their problem. Half (50.0%) had to escalate to a human, and 14.9% never got a real resolution at all. The chatbot's job is to deflect work away from human agents. The data shows it deflects roughly one in nine cases successfully, and forces a second contact for the rest.
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The App Store Evidence
Chatbot-blame negative reviews rose 55.49% year over year across Europe's 10 biggest money apps
A scrape of 159,600 reviews across the 10 most-used banking, wallet, and payment apps in Europe — Revolut, bunq, Monzo, Wise, N26, Sumeria, Starling, Bourso, Monese, and Chase UK — found 34,167 negative reviews (1-star and 2-star) in the analysis window. Reviews blaming a chatbot or AI assistant for an unresolved problem rose 55.49% year over year. The trust gap isn't a survey artefact. It's pan-European and growing.
Identity verification and declined transactions are the top problems chatbots can't resolve
Among chatbot-blame negative reviews where the underlying problem was classifiable, the four most common unresolved categories are identity verification (16.85%), declined transactions (16.09%), login and access issues (12.74%), and account suspension (11.23%). Together they account for 57% of all classified chatbot-blame reviews. These are the exact failure modes that need a human, and the exact failure modes a well-built digital banking platform is meant to prevent reaching the customer in the first place: identity edge cases, account-level decisions, and time-sensitive payment problems.
The Trust Gap
Users trust a human agent 12 times more than a chatbot to fix problems with their money
Asked who they trust most to actually resolve a problem with a banking, wallet, or payment app, 65.2% of consumers pick a human agent. Just 5.4% pick the chatbot or AI assistant, a 12-to-1 preference for humans. Another 19.1% trust neither and expect to have to escalate, and 10.3% say they don't know. Taken together, that's nearly one in four app users (24.5%) who have no faith that the first thing they touch when something goes wrong will actually help them.
Of users who've been blocked, half have been blocked more than once
Of the 77.2% of surveyed app users who have had a payment, transfer, or transaction blocked, declined, or paused, half (50.4% within the affected base) say it has happened more than once. Within the full sample, 38.9% have been blocked repeatedly and 38.2% only once. Almost an even split. The block isn't a one-off error pattern that hits a user, gets resolved, and goes away. It recurs.
The Block Experience
77.2% of surveyed app users have had a payment blocked, declined, or paused
More than three quarters of surveyed banking, wallet, and payment app users say their app has blocked, declined, or paused a payment, transfer, or transaction they were actually trying to make. The experience is split almost evenly between people it has happened to once (38.2%) and people it has happened to more than once (38.9%). Only 21% say it has never happened to them. Behind each of those decisions sits a payment acquiring stack making a real-time call on whether to let the transaction through.
Only 13.4% of users consciously feel their app is over-cautious, a 64-point gap with reality
When asked directly whether their app is too cautious with their money, only 13.4% of users say yes (1.7% often, 11.8% occasionally). Nearly half (48.7%) say they're not sure, and 37.9% say no. Yet 77.2% of the same sample have had a payment blocked. The 64-point gap between conscious perception and actual experience suggests users treat each block as a one-off rather than as evidence of a wider pattern.
The Cost of the Block
56.7% lose hours or days, and nearly half see the transaction never complete
Of the 1,162 users whose payment was blocked, 56.7% say resolution took hours or days. For 48.0%, the transaction never went through at all. They had to find another way to pay, or didn't pay. The block doesn't just inconvenience the user. Half the time, it kills the payment entirely.
10% used a different app or bank afterwards, the churn signal
When a payment is blocked, 10.0% of affected users complete it using a different app or bank. Another 27.6% are embarrassed at the point of failure, often in front of someone at a checkout, and 15.0% miss a bill or incur a late fee. One in ten lost transactions becomes one in ten lost customers, at least for that purchase, and potentially for good.
Explore the press release and visual highlights
Get the official press release and view key data visualized in infographics designed for media use and sharing.