PayThink

Social media won't drive profits until banks figure out how to direct traffic to their blog and provide the kind of emotional content that people like to share, writes John Siracusa.

Though leveraging credit prescreening can be complicated, organizations that are proactive in developing clear policies and processes can safely market themselves to desirable customers, according to consultant Rich Walker.

All of us who work in the technology sector can play a part in helping to figure out how to deliver economic services to nearly half of the world’s population, many of whom live without access to basic financial services such as a savings account.

Higher capital requirements, sluggish GDP growth and antiquated cost structures are stymying banks’ efforts to boost returns to investors. This will likely lead to a boom in mergers and acquisitions over the next decade, writes Richard J. Parsons.

Expanded reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act will give regulators access to a panoply of sensitive data. Banks should take steps to address any fair lending issues before the new rules take effect, according to Warren W. Traiger.

To understand the future of credit-based transactions, credit unions need only look to the staples of American culture: coffee and donuts.

Regulators need to provide clear standards as to what constitutes an acceptable living will, according to the American Enterprise Institute's Abby McCloskey and Paul H. Kupiec.

The Heartbleed bug alerted banks to their own vulnerabilities and made them realize that they have heightened responsibilities toward customers when it comes to communicating security concerns, according to Joram Borenstein of NICE Actimize.

Mobile point of sale providers claim to serve the merchants that are too small for card acceptance: the gardeners, the babysitters, the flea market sellers. But this image is quickly fading as vendors pursue larger merchants, causing the upstart mPOS players to increasingly resemble the incumbents.

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