GlobalData’s Celent division has published a report entitled Moving the Needle with Digital Cardholder Engagement: From Features to AI-First Experiences.
Over the last decade or so, card issuers have witnessed an irreversible shift: Their customers have gone digital and expect to do ever more via digital channels, especially mobile. Consumer digital products and lifestyles continue to drive high expectations for usability, convenience, transparency, and proactive assistance. Done well, digital customer engagement also benefits financial institutions across all performance levers, leading to increased revenue and reduced costs and risks.
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As a widely used payment method, cards offer unique opportunities for digital engagement. Issuers can and should be engaging cardholders digitally across the entire lifecycle, from preparing and setting things up to enable transactions to ongoing servicing and problem-solving. However, not all issuers yet offer the same set of capabilities.
Celent examines the current state of digital cardholder engagement, both capabilities and delivery approaches. In its analysis, Celent distinguishes between what it considers to be table-stakes – i.e., most issuers are offering these capabilities already – and those that can help differentiate and stand out from the crowd.
Celent’s annual Model Bank awards
Celent has been tracking developments in digital cardholder engagement for over a decade. Regular conversations in the industry with both issuers and technology vendors, as well as nominations we receive for our Model Bank awards program, allow us to maintain a perspective on “what good looks like.”
Celent large-scale research program: reviewing nearly 30 card issuer processing solutions
Furthermore, Celent has just conducted a large-scale research program reviewing nearly 30 card issuer processing solutions, giving additional and up-to-date insight into state-of-the-art capabilities in digital cardholder engagement. The analysis of that study findings is still ongoing and will be published in a separate upcoming report, Decoding Card Issuing and Processing Solutions, in May.
Key findings
Leading issuers are moving from enabling individual features and functionality (e.g., basic card controls, alerts) to orchestrating increasingly sophisticated experiences such as subscription management or providing real-time guidance and advice if a transaction is declined. As they look forward, issuers should prepare for engagement in the AI world: enabling AI copilot mode for cardholders, supporting agentic commerce, and getting ready to interact with customers’ AI agents.
Further information on accessing the full report is available via this link.
