Opinions

Merchants don’t stick to the binary simplicity of online and offline anymore. They are reaching their consumers through a wide array of channels including mobile, kiosks, chatbots and call centers, writes TJ Sharkey, senior vice president of financial institutions, acquiring and processing at Mastercard.

Unlike non-data-driven processes (paper), bidirectional visibility allows for more agility and speed with the digital platforms and technology that support transactions, writes Matt Clark, president and COO of Corcentric.

Buying a startup or running an accelerator program isn’t enough to help banks truly prepare for the coming digital age.

Every transaction is traceable on the blockchain — though only to the addresses that initiated it. Compare this to Fedwire Funds Service and ACH payments, which don’t have this transaction history available, writes Bob Rutherford is the CEO and founder of Hedge.

The warning doesn't touch on blockchain's nonfinancial applications, where it is making more of an impact, contends Joseph Thompson, CEO and co-founder of AID:Tech.

Warnings about "breaking the internet" and environmental harm don't take blockchain's ability to improve these factors into account, contends Vladislav Dramaliev, marketing lead at aeternity.

CRM solutions have proved useful in providing a technological infrastructure for gathering data on a customer, but they are just that—an infrastructure. The larger difficulty is often managing the content and messaging that goes through the CRM pipeline, according to Patrick Kehoe, executive vice president of Messagepoint.

The move from standard to real-time transactions adds another layer of complexity and creates further opportunities for fraudsters. Quicker transaction times increase the chances of fraudulent transactions going undetected, writes David Worthington, vice president of payments at Rambus.

The bank’s weakened public reputation makes it a target for additional attacks.

The Dixons Carphone hack shows again that merchants and payment companies need to do more to make data unattractive to thieves, according to Robert Capps, vice president of NuData Security, a Mastercard Company.