3 features to integrate into your banking app to lower support costs

One unclear transaction can turn into a phone call, a frozen card, a fraud review, and a £7.20 dispute investigation.

The repetitive ‘what is this payment?’ question definitely eats through a lot of support time. We estimate that around 20% of bank call centre calls relate to confusion about transactions.

Better banking app features can answer that question before it reaches the contact centre. For product and customer experience teams, the opportunity is simple: make transaction history clearer, faster, and easier to trust.

Why does transaction confusion increase operational support costs?

Transaction confusion increases costs because the customer cannot resolve the issue alone.

They open their mobile banking app and see a payment they do not recognise. Then, they have to decide whether it is fraud, a forgotten purchase, a subscription, a delayed payment, or a merchant name they simply do not recognise.

This lack-of-recognition moment can quickly turn into:

• A customer support call
• A card freeze or replacement
• A transaction dispute
• A fraud review
• Follow-up admin
• Loss of trust in the banking app

Moneyhub estimates the average cost of a single dispute investigation is £7.20. But that only covers investigation, administration, and support handling. It does not include the costs of customer frustration leading to lower LTV and churn, incorrectly applied fraud controls, or potential regulatory enforcement action through Consumer Duty due to complaints.

Customers are right to be cautious. UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report 2026 reported that criminals stole £1.28 billion through payment fraud in 2025, with 3.81 million unauthorised fraud cases. The problem for financial institutions is that not every unfamiliar transaction is fraud.

There is also a real customer experience risk. A public LinkedIn post by Anthony Voigt showed how easily a transaction can be missed or misunderstood, even by the CEO of a finance company, when the details do not match the customer’s memory of the purchase.

That is the expensive middle ground: the payment may not be fraud, but it’s not clear enough for the customer to trust it. If the app does not close that gap, customer support has to.

For digital banking operatives, that support should begin before the customer picks up the phone.

What banking app features can eliminate transaction confusion?

For product and customer experience teams, three areas matter most:

• Real-time transaction enrichment insights
• Advanced security and fraud detection
• Intelligent AI chatbots with clear routes to human support

Each feature tackles a different part of the same journey. The customer needs to understand what happened, decide whether it looks right, and get help without joining a queue. The most useful mobile banking features do not just add more buttons. They reduce the need for help in the first place.

Real-time transaction enrichment insights

Real-time enrichment is one of the most practical banking app features for reducing avoidable support demand.

Customers do not think in merchant IDs, parent company names, processor strings, or generic payment references. They remember what they bought, where they were, and roughly when it happened.

If the banking app shows vague or delayed information, the customer has to fill in the blanks.

Real-time enrichment can help surface:

• Recognisable merchant names, logos, location details and clear spending categories
• Searchable transaction history with filters by date, amount and merchant
• Payment channel and transaction status (cleared versus pending)
• Immediate notifications when money is spent
  

One thing to note: timing is everything here, delays shouldn’t be an option. A clear notification seconds after a purchase helps the customer connect the payment to what they just did. A vague transaction hours later leaves them relying on memory, as the transaction-notification framework explains.

	Customer is shopping	Customer is not shopping
Spending notification received	Customer is reaffirmed that you’re providing a high-quality service.	Customer suspects fraud and immediately raises a dispute – helpful for your team as the probability of false positives is low.
No spending notification received	No news is bad news. Customer is left to wonder when the transaction will clear their account, and doesn’t have a clear view on upcoming spending commitments, general budget or potential fraud.	Customer has an up-to-date view of their bank account and upcoming spending commitments.

Advanced security and fraud detection

Security features reduce support costs when they enable customers to act quickly and confidently.

The aim is not to make the customer responsible for fraud detection. It is to provide them with enough context and control to handle common concerns within the mobile banking app. That starts with better transaction information.

If a payment shows the true merchant, category, location, and status, the bank’s fraud systems have better input. The customer also has a clearer view of whether the transaction makes sense.

Useful security features include:

• Instant card freezing controlled by the customer
• Real-time spending notifications
• Clear merchant and location details
• Step-up checks for higher-risk payments
• Simple routes to confirm, query, or block a transaction
• Clear explanations when a payment is declined or held

Our work with banks on real-time fraud detection shows how clearer transaction data can help financial institutions identify suspicious activity and prompt faster action inside the banking app.

A well-timed nudge can ask the customer to confirm a transaction without pushing them straight into a customer service journey. Something as simple as ‘was this you?’

That small prompt can prevent two bad outcomes:

1. It can help prevent fraud when a transaction is not genuine

2. And it can prevent unnecessary support contact when the customer simply needs a reminder

The key is balance, too little friction leaves customers exposed. Too much friction leads to false alarms, blocked cards, and increased pressure on customer support.

Intelligent applied AI: chatbots

Applying AI to solve the problem with chatbots has shown to lower support costs, but they need a clear role.

The caveat: they are not a replacement for human customer service, especially when a customer suspects fraud.

In that moment, the customer needs to trust that their financial institution will help them, not send them into a loop.

In our testing, we’ve found chatbots to be useful earlier in the journey.

If a customer is confused by a transaction, an in-app assistant can help them reach recognition before the query becomes a call. It can explain why a merchant name looks unfamiliar, show related transactions, clarify whether a payment is pending, or help the customer search by amount, date, merchant, or category.

This is particularly useful for all banks with transaction data that varies across merchants. If the app still shows a parent company name, code string, or payment processor instead of the true merchant, the chatbot can provide a second layer of explanation while the bank improves the underlying data.

The FCA’s Consumer Support Outcome review gives examples of firms using digital support, including webchat and chatbots, while still recognising the need to move complex or sensitive cases to human support.

A useful application of AI should therefore be able to answer simple questions, such as:

• What is this merchant?
• Have I paid them before?
• Is this payment pending?
• Is this a subscription?
• Why is the merchant name different?
• Can I freeze my card?
• When should I speak to someone?

For customer support cost reduction, we recommend giving the chatbot a specific job, allowing it to answer low-risk questions and guide customers to recognition, and escalating quickly when the customer needs a person.

How should product teams prioritise these banking app features?

A practical roadmap starts with the feature that removes the most confusion nearest to the source: in most cases, real-time transaction enrichment.

Once transaction history is clearer, security features become more useful. Fraud alerts can include better context. ‘Was this you?’ prompts become easier for customers to answer. Card freezing becomes a confident action, not a panic response.

Then, applied AI has the right information to work from. Instead of trying to explain unclear data, chatbots can help customers navigate clearer transaction records.

A sensible rollout could look like this:

1. Improve merchant recognition, categorisation, and transaction context
2. Add real-time spending notifications and searchable transaction history
3. Introduce customer-owned controls such as instant card freezing
4. Use nudges for suspicious, unusual, or unclear activity
5. Add chatbot support for low-risk transaction queries
6. Escalate fraud concerns and vulnerable customer needs to human teams

For a financial institution, the goal is not simply to have more mobile banking features. It is to reduce the moments where customers feel they have no choice but to call.

Fix the transaction data first

The best banking app features all depend on the same foundation: clear transaction data.

Real-time enrichment helps customers recognise spending. Security features help them act when something looks wrong. Chatbots can answer simple questions before they become customer service calls.

But none of that works properly if the transaction history is vague, delayed, or wrong.

For financial institutions ready to reduce transaction confusion, Moneyhub can help customers recognise spending in the banking app.

Time to lower your support costs?

To lower support costs, banks need to reduce confusion at the point it starts. That means clearer merchant names, better categories, useful location data, real-time notifications, and support journeys that know when to escalate.

Reduce transaction confusion

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About Matt Barr

Matt Barr is a Product Director here at Moneyhub. He’s been working either with or for banks since the mid-00s, solving all manner of problems. From ISA transfers to corporate actions, Matt now focuses on transaction categorisation and enrichment. When he’s not solving client problems, you can find Matt buried under his children’s laundry or stomping through the Peak District.