Correspondent Blog

As we near the final stages of strategic planning and budgeting, several bank technology trends are emerging that will play out over the next several years. This list isn’t necessarily for bank technologists but for business line executives who make decisions on products and services. In this article, we highlight these investments, put them in…

With almost 30% of banks utilizing some portion of instant payments, the industry is starting to gather more data on how instant payments impact balances, customer acquisition, and account usage. Instant payments have the potential to change the payment landscape for banks. In this article, we look at seven ways instant payments impact deposit performance…

The spectacle that is Money 20/20 (Money 2020 or M2020) went down last week, and it did not disappoint. Money 2020 is likely the conference with the lowest conference-attendee-to-session-attendee ratio in the industry. While the sessions were interesting,  the heart of the conference is all about sales, partnerships, and deal-making. In this respect, 2024 was…

It has long frustrated us that our industry has no aggregate banking calendar. That is, there is no single place to see all the banking conferences, workshops, symposiums, and conventions (we will use the generic “conference”) in the banking industry. If you are trying to budget for next year, train yourself, train your people, prospect,…

Sometime soon, one of the banks reading this will likely be the last bank to handle paper checks. Last week’s announcement that Target, one of the nation’s largest retailers, will not take personal checks past July 15th has made bankers take notice. Target joins Whole Foods, Aldi, and Lululemon as major retailers that have found…

Last week, Nacha held its Smarter Faster Payments Conference in Miami, a significant event for over 1,800 bankers and vendors. With 142 presentations and panels, the content was tailored to the needs of every bank interested in payments. The major themes of fraud, artificial intelligence (AI), expansion of instant payments, open banking, and regulation were…

Bankers often overlook how much money is stored in digital wallets away from their bank. While the amounts are relatively small on an individual basis, they are massive in aggregate. While some of these are stored at the banking-as-a-service banks such as Goldman Sachs, or The Bancorp, many digital wallets, like Starbucks, reside at the…

Not all customers are created equal. Some customers are more profitable than others, and if you are out to build a more profitable bank, it pays to have a tactical plan to go after more profitable customers. The treasury or cash management customer is usually a bank’s most profitable customer on a risk-adjusted basis (HERE). …

Next week, FedNow goes live, ushering in the next era of faster payments. Some 57 financial institutions will start with FedNow, including about 42 banks (plus a handful of core systems providers and fintechs). FedNow joins The Clearing House, which has offered real-time payments (RTP®) for the last five years. Banks are about to win…

Today, the President’s Working Group released its long-awaited report on cryptocurrency (HERE) and the use of stablecoin in the payment system. The report gives a prominent role for banks causing many bankers to celebrate while others are left wondering what it all means for the future of banking. If you seek a working knowledge of…

Bank payments are a mess. Every payment method is a different channel. Worse yet, we confuse our customers with different forms, procedures, and jargon. It has been 50 years and we still expect our customers to know the difference between a wire and an ACH. If we can’t talk to customers about it right, we…

As a banker, you undoubtedly keep an eye on the trends of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. Their huge popularity must have you thinking about the future of money. Like JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, you were probably against these currencies to start and now have come around to being more open to them,…