PayThink

New recommendations by the Federal Reserve Board are a crucial step in the direction of much-needed restructuring of the U.S. financial sector.

Nearly a year after the October 2015 liability shift, a mere 17% to 37% of all US merchants have adopted EMV POS terminals.

As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposes new small-dollar lending rules, it has also sought comment on an alternative plan that would open the door to banks providing more lower-income credit solutions.

While the retail lobby won in the political arena and successfully decreased its costs through price-fixing, the biggest loser in this situation was the American consumer.

With new fintech investments tapering off and banks starting to get the hang of digital innovation, young companies need to take a hard look at their business models.

It is inevitable that the masses will adopt cryptocurrencies.

Heightened risk management standards and the "three lines of defense" are supposed to help banks ward off scandal, but they failed miserably.

The alleged practices at the heart of Well Fargo's settlement were fueled by a short-term incentive system that is detached from broader goals.

While troubling factors such as higher risk profiles may be behind the recent lending boom, the industry could also just be returning to the historical average for loan growth following the "Great Panic" of 2008-2010.

In the past, hackers have most often gone after specific merchants when seeking cardholder information. Recent attacks on point-of-sale (POS) vendors, however, may signal a drastic shift in how these cybercriminals operate, and certainly signal a need for application security for mobile payments.