BankThink

The close vote, however, shows just how dissatisfied folks have become with the opaque and inconsistent RWA system.

The recent court ruling on debit interchange fees should remind the payments industry how harmful the Durbin amendment is.

Consumers deserve the kinds of high quality, widely accessible savings, credit and payments products and experiences that are critical ingredients in the recipe for financial health.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Nasdaq's Knock Out: Regulators and exchange officials continued digging up more information as to what caused Nasdaq's three-hour shutdown on Thursday. The Journal reports it was a two-minute window where rival electronic market NYSE Arca could not connect with the Nasdaq after numerous attempts, according to unnamed sources. But Robert Greifeld, the chief executive of the Nasdaq-OMX Group, says it was because the U.S. equity market is a "fragmented landscape," the FT reports. The papers took divergent stances, as the Journal says the glitch "exposed a weakness in the plumbing of the market" and the Times says Nasdaq looks "more like a vulnerable also-ran."

Convenience for the receiver will ultimately drive mass adoption of P2P payments and give financial institutions that deploy this service a competitive advantage.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

The spectrum of gift cards provides a great deal of diversity. CUs need to tie the cards to a credit union account to foster mutually beneficial long-term relationships.

It is time for the U.S. to take the lead in having the safest and soundest banks, rather than to strive toward the lowest common and detrimental denominator.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Nasdaq Outage: The Nasdaq stock exchange went down for three hours on Thursday, after a technical glitch caused connectivity issues and interrupted its ability to quote prices. The failure "delivered another black eye to Nasdaq, which was bruised by last year's botched initial public offering of Facebook," reports the Journal. This incident, coupled with Goldman's rogue computer problems from earlier this week, has also raised new questions about the high-speed, computerized structure of our financial markets. "While regulators and market participants have taken several steps to strengthen their systems, the problems this week suggest that the flaws in the markets have not been repaired, and may actually be getting worse," Dealbook notes. Perhaps not-so-surprisingly, the Journal is reporting that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is moving to rein in high-speed trading by developing a road map it can use to develop rules for the practice. "The road map, which must be approved by the commission before it is officially released, could pave the way for more direct scrutiny of such activities," one agency commissioner tells the paper. Back in March, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules intended to prevent these types of technical snafus, but the exchanges have fought against them. In a statement following the Nasdaq meltdown, SEC chairman Mary Jo White said she would move to have the proposal approved. Washington Post, Financial Times

State and federal regulators appear to be orchestrating a series of actions to force financial institutions and third-party payment processors to stop doing business with certain online consumer installment lenders.