78% of CFOs Warn Payment Blind Spots Are Costing Trust

On July 15, PYMNTS put a hard number on a finance problem that too many companies still treat as operational noise: 78% of CFOs say payment blind spots are increasing customer friction, according to PYMNTS.

The finding comes from the June 2026 edition of The 2026 Certainty Project, a PYMNTS Intelligence and Plaid collaboration. The timing matters because the report reframes fraud prevention. The old goal was simple: stop bad transactions. The new test is harder. Stop bad transactions while letting good money move without delay, confusion, or unnecessary customer pain.

July 15: CFOs Recast Payment Blind Spots as a Revenue Leak

The sharpest signal in the PYMNTS data is not that CFOs care about fraud controls. They already do. It is that payment uncertainty is now showing up as customer friction, partner frustration, and direct revenue drag.

Nearly 6 in 10 surveyed CFOs, 58%, said their companies give equal priority to payment speed and security. Yet only 43% rated their ability to deliver both as strong or very strong. That gap is the story.

A company can have strict fraud controls and still run a weak payment operation. If legitimate transactions get delayed, misrouted, declined, or pushed into opaque review queues, the fraud system has merely shifted the loss. Instead of absorbing fraud losses, the business absorbs support tickets, delayed orders, strained supplier relationships, and customers who no longer trust the process.

78% of CFOs said visibility and communication gaps involving fees, timelines or payment policies had increased customer friction.

XOOMAR analysis: this is a CFO problem because it hits the line between risk control and revenue realization. The finance team wants lower exposure. The customer wants the payment to work. The business cannot afford to make every good payer feel like a suspect.

June 2026 Data: Fraud Controls Are Colliding With Customer Experience

The report’s numbers show a clear mismatch between intent and execution.

The source points to specific blind spots: gaps around fees, timelines, and payment policies, plus execution failures such as delayed or incorrect payments. It also says companies with recurring friction were more likely than friction-light firms to report inconsistent payment-channel experiences and burdensome authentication.

That matters because friction is not always a single failure. It can be a stack of small failures. A customer does not know why a payment is held. A supplier cannot tell when funds will arrive. A support agent lacks the status needed to explain the delay. A fraud review reaches the right decision, but too late to protect the relationship.

For readers tracking adjacent payment infrastructure moves, XOOMAR’s coverage of PayPal pulling payment sprawl inside Adobe Commerce Admin is relevant context for how commerce operators are trying to reduce operational fragmentation. The PYMNTS report points to the same pressure from another angle: payment tools that sit outside the workflow can turn every exception into manual work.

The 192 Basis-Point Warning: Friction Has a Measurable Cost

PYMNTS reports that companies experiencing recurring payment friction estimated that delays, errors, fraud, and related resolution work consumed 192 basis points of annual revenue, nearly 2%.

Companies with little friction reported a cost of 31 basis points.

That spread is hard to ignore. Recurring friction cost more than six times what friction-light companies reported. The report does not say firms should loosen controls. It suggests the opposite: blunt controls are expensive because they fail to separate suspicious activity from ordinary transactions with enough precision.

The capability gap makes the same point. Companies that rarely experienced payment delays gave their payment-handling capabilities an average score of 71 out of 100. Companies with recurring delays scored themselves at 42.

That 29-point gap shows payment certainty is not just a policy choice. It is an infrastructure issue.

XOOMAR analysis: the most damaging fraud system may be one that looks conservative on paper but forces too many legitimate payments into exception handling. Manual review can protect a transaction. At scale, it can also become a revenue tax.

From Initiation to Review: How Good Customers Become Failed Transactions

A legitimate payment can run into friction at several points: initiation, authorization, verification, fraud scoring, review, execution, and communication. PYMNTS does not map each step in technical detail, but its findings show where the customer feels the breakdown.

Some friction is necessary. A suspicious transaction should be challenged. A high-risk payment may need verification. The issue is wasted friction: repeated checks, unclear holds, inconsistent channel behavior, and delays that no one can explain.

The customer usually does not see a risk model. They see a failed experience.

Payment blind spots make that worse because they reduce confidence on both sides of the transaction. The business cannot decide how much friction to apply. The customer cannot tell whether the payment has succeeded. The result is a slow, expensive loop of review, support, and reconciliation.

The report’s core insight is that payment certainty depends on more than blocking fraud. It also depends on preserving the flow of legitimate money and giving every party enough visibility to trust the process.

CFOs, Risk Teams, Product Teams, and Customers Are Pulling on the Same Check

The same payment check serves different masters.

• CFOs want predictable cash movement, lower loss exposure, and fewer revenue leaks.
• Risk teams want controls strong enough to stop suspicious activity.
• Customers and partners want speed, clarity, and confidence that the payment worked.
• Product and operations teams want fewer drop-offs, fewer manual reviews, and fewer support escalations.

PYMNTS describes payment friction as a problem that can hold up orders, interrupt supplier relationships, increase customer-service volume, and create uncertainty about whether a transaction succeeded. That is broader than fraud loss. It is operational drag.

XOOMAR analysis: the winning setup is likely the one that applies friction selectively. Not every payment needs the same treatment. But selective friction requires better visibility into transaction status, policy, and execution. Without that, companies default to broad rules. Broad rules feel safe until they start blocking good commerce.

Readers following the enforcement side of financial services may also find XOOMAR’s $9.5B CFPB enforcement trio coverage useful for a separate but related theme: finance operations are increasingly judged not only by intent, but by outcomes experienced by customers.

The Next Decision Point: Move Fraud Detection Closer to the Payment

PYMNTS says the objective is not automation for its own sake. It is to move fraud detection closer to the moment of payment.

That is the practical takeaway. Companies do not need more friction. They need better-timed friction, better explained friction, and fewer false alarms that push legitimate activity into manual workflows.

The report also leaves some questions open. The supplied material does not include sample size, industry mix, or survey methodology details. It does not show which payment channels produced the most friction. It does not quantify abandonment, churn, or support cost separately. Those details would help investors, operators, and finance leaders judge where the pain is concentrated.

Still, the thesis is clear enough: payment blind spots are becoming a measurable business risk. Evidence that would strengthen it would include channel-level data linking payment visibility to approval rates, resolution times, customer complaints, and revenue recovery. Evidence that would weaken it would show firms improving fraud outcomes without reducing payment speed, clarity, or execution quality.

For now, CFOs have a cleaner mandate. Treat payment visibility as customer infrastructure, not a back-office control. Fraud prevention that stops crime but stalls commerce is no longer good enough.

Disclaimer: This XOOMAR analysis is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not financial, investment, legal, tax, or professional advice. It does not provide buy, sell, hold, price-target, portfolio, or personalized recommendations. Verify information independently and consult qualified professionals before making decisions.

The Bottom Line

• Payment uncertainty is becoming a revenue issue, not just an operations problem.
• CFOs face pressure to reduce fraud without slowing legitimate transactions.
• The gap between payment priorities and execution can drive customer friction, support costs and lost trust.