PayThink

While the big players in mobile have arrived—Apple, Samsung and Google, the result has been a trade of one form of complexity for another.

General Electric's plan to sell most of its financing arm has been hailed as a sign that financial reform is successfully persuading "too big to fail" firms to break up. But the end of GE Capital just means that the conglomerates left standing are even more homogeneous and risk-prone.

As Basel III gets ready to turn five years old this summer, recently appointed Basel Committee secretary general William Coen is taking the necessary step of ensuring that new capital ratio, liquidity standard and leverage ratio rules work well together.

The cost of complying with New York State's proposed BitLicense regulations would wipe out many smaller digital currency businesses. But there is a middle ground: placing those businesses under the supervision of a self-regulating incubator that would help them develop robust yet affordable compliance programs.

Google’s announcement of Pony Express, a bill presentment and payment service, has caught the attention of many financial service providers including banks and credit unions.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including thoughts on regulatory complexity, Jamie Dimon's defense of the megabank model, and how vulnerable banks really are to tech startups.

Banking has less in common with industries like music and entertainment than it does with long-entrenched pharmaceutical, grocery store and airline businesses — all of which can absorb the threat of new entrants by adapting to them.

When costs plummet but prices stay high as ever, a market is clearly not working properly. But that's what is happening right now in the business of processing credit- and debit-card transactions, thanks to price-fixing that harms not just merchants but consumers and the entire economy.

Lyle Beckwith of the National Association of Convenience Stores argues that debit card interchange is unfairly high. But this argument ignores several key points.

JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon tried to defend his bank's size and scope by suggesting that community banks are just as vulnerable in a crisis. But he succeeded only in proving that Wall Street firms will make the same mistakes all over again unless the government takes steps to disincentivize their risky behavior.