PayThink

Hundreds of thousands of people are in Brazil for the World Cup football tournament. While Brazil poses risks for payment crime, there are things payment companies and issuers can do to help their customers mitigate danger, such as communicating preventative measures.

It’s true that AIG’s heavily regulated securities lending program played a role in the downfall of the insurer. But it is a dangerous fallacy to argue that this proves that regulation should be left entirely to the markets.

On one hand, bills supporting deregulation are garnering legislative support. On the other, a number of high-profile members of Congress have spoken out in favor of stricter rule enforcement and prosecution.

Banks can boost productivity with a number of counter-intuitive practices. For starters, they can let customers wait in line for a little while.

The recent proposal for the U.S. Postal Service to sell banking services invites comparisons to Walmart's equally controversial, and ultimately abandoned, 2005 bid for a banking charter. Both would-be financial industry game-changers are large and ubiquitous, but there are some notable differences.

Under-35 consumers find more value in retailers’ loyalty programs than they do deposit accounts, and it’s up to banks to figure out how to capitalize on that transaction-first mindset.

Fast-forward into our ideal mobile payment future. Standardized contactless terminals stand on every checkout counter, ready to transact securely with any device. However, once mobile wallets cross the adoption hurdle, they can’t be content to rest. There are essential steps the technology will have to take to ensure its hard-won users don’t rethink the decision to go mobile.

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

The new American Express film “Spent” offers an opportunity to consider some emerging strategies aimed at helping low-income and struggling middle-class Americans avoid or get out of debt.

Some of you might be thinking, “Why is the PCI Security Standards Council so focused on the basics, like password security, with all these ‘advanced attacks’ going on right now?”