PayThink

So many banks are running systems that were implemented before 1984, the year Mark Zuckerberg was born. They’re going to be dead meat in the age of real-time connectivity in the near-free world of today’s mobile Internet.

Regulatory action is needed to weed out patently unfair fee structures, but as an industry we should and can do better on our own.

October 1 marked the dawn of a new era in the U.S. payment card marketplace. While there are not yet rules from the card brands that demand all parties utilize EMV technology, the financial liability shift is a significant first step across a line in the sand that cannot be erased.

While migration to cards with chip technology should help mitigate card fraud, additional steps by retailers and more layers of security are needed.

Presidential candidates shouldn’t rely on crowd-pleasing gimmicks or trick plays to reform the banking system, but the execution of the basics. This means focusing on the time-tested risk-return tradeoff and restructuring our existing deposit insurance system to be truly risk based.

From interest rate risk to C-suite and boardroom diversity to succession planning, community bankers need to be acutely tuned in to a combination of global and domestic factors that are changing their world at an unprecedented pace.

With the EMV liability shift having just passed, banks and merchants alike are scrambling to comply with the card network-imposed deadline.

Even if Operation Choke Point officially ended, U.S. regulators have continued to apply the policy of threatening investigations and ruinous fines against banks that service "high-risk" customers in disfavored industries.

We used to be content just searching online for information on products, scanning the latest news or finding out what our friends and family were up to.

The argument that a Republican CFPB director could wreak havoc on what the agency has already accomplished just doesn't hold water.