PayThink

There have literally been dozens of tablet-based point of sale solutions introduced to the retail market and with reason. The demand for a better point of sale software solution has been increasing rapidly.

Startups that focus on person-to-person payments or peer-to-peer lending may well be the future heavyweights of the financial services industry. Banks must either band together to create viable alternatives or risk losing relevance.

Even activities permitted under the Volcker Rule may not be worth the legal and compliance costs for small and midsize banks, according to three attorneys at Bass, Berry & Sims.

Personal financial management (PFM) services are falling short of their potential because financial institutions aren't collecting enough data on payments to property categorize purchases.

Banks that want to stay ahead of the digital curve should consider hub-and-spoke branch models, products that blend digital and physical services and innovation labs that allow creative thinkers to experiment — and even to fail.

Australian banks give homeowners greater flexibility with portable loans and an option that lets customers make prepayments on their mortgages and tap into the extra cash later. American banks could increase customer retention — and build stronger client relationships — by doing the same.

A recent report from the Center for Responsible Lending finds that debt settlement companies frequently fail to settle the bulk of their clients’ debts, leaving them in even weaker financial positions.

Big banks stand to lose hordes of young and dissatisfied customers to digital banking startups and tech behemoths like Google, Apple and Amazon. Community banks, on the other hand, have a more loyal base.

There’s a paradox at the heart of mobile payments’ spectacular growth. On a global basis, the use of mobile devices for payments of all kinds is booming: Gartner Group projected worldwide mobile payment transactions for 2013 would total $235.4 billion, an impressive 44% increase over the previous year’s $163.1 billion. Future forecasts for mobile’s growth are equally rosy: Yankee Group now projects that the entire mobile economy will be valued at $3.1 trillion by 2017, with all mobile sectors—devices, commerce, broadband, apps and cloud—contributing to the potential earnings.

Reducing the number of Home Loan banks would lower the cost of advances for community banks, leaving them with more money to lend out to their communities.