Big banks saw the costs of their services and improvements in customer support help drive small business satisfaction with their payment processing services, according to a new study from J.D. Power.

The J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Merchant Services Satisfaction Study showed that small businesses were significantly more satisfied with big banks that provide payment processing services compared to the previous year, as the use of payment cards, electronic payments and mobile payment apps has surged.

“The past couple of years have been very challenging for most small businesses, but industry-wide efforts to simplify payment processing fee structures, ramp up customer support and speed up payments have had positive effects on merchant services satisfaction,” Paul McAdam, senior director of banking and payments intelligence at J.D. Power, said in a statement. “The largest year-over-year satisfaction gains have been driven by the big banks, which have historically trailed fintech payment providers in delivering low-cost, user-friendly merchant services solutions. Now, the big banks are matching or exceeding fintechs in small business satisfaction with merchant services.”

J.D. Power’s study was conducted from September through October 2021 and included responses from 4,406 small business customers of merchant services providers.

Overall small business satisfaction with merchant services providers is 859 on a 1,000-point scale, up a significant 23 points from the 2021 study, J.D. Power said. The top two performers in the study – Bank of America and Chase Merchant Services – had notable gains, with Bank of America increasing by 45 points and Chase rising by 35 points from last year’s study.

The increases in overall satisfaction were driven by a 33-point increase in satisfaction with cost of service and a 32-point increase in satisfaction with service interactions.

“Small businesses have improved understanding of payment processing fee structures, which have led to increased satisfaction with the ability to manage or control total payment costs,” J.D. Power said.

Small businesses also had fewer problems with their point-of-sale terminal and card reader technology, the study found.

Small businesses also said they received payments faster, with 34 percent responding that the typical amount of time from the transaction to funding their merchant accounts was faster than expected, up 10 percentage points from a year ago. More small businesses also said they received faster funding, with 65 percent saying card payments were settled or posted the same day or on non-business days, up 14 percentage points from the 2021 study.

Satisfaction with cost of service has been driven by proactive measures that merchant services providers took during the pandemic, J.D. Power said, with 73 percent of small businesses saying they knew of at least one measure taken in response to pandemic-related challenges. These actions included offering discounted products and services, updated fraud controls and faster funding turnaround times. Satisfaction with cost of service increased by 71 points from the previous study, J.D. Power said.