Resources

JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo kicked off bank earnings season with decidedly mixed results. Both were solidly profitable, but their methods for remaining so suggest that smaller rivals may have a hard time following suit. American Banker editors discuss the results and what they say about the industry's prospects for the year ahead.

Vanity "payment names" could simplify the moving of money for consumers, employers, billers and financial institutions alike, argues Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion.

The large U.S. banks are being shortsighted when they protest that upgrading the payments system, as the Federal Reserve wants them to do, will require short-term as well as long-term payoffs, argues consultant Dave Birch. Banks in other countries have benefitted greatly from modernization projects, he says, pointing to the examples of M-Pesa in Kenya and Faster Payments in the U.K.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to draft rules governing payday lending this year. But the conventional wisdom that will likely guide it is based on false perceptions about the working poor and the best way to serve them. So argues Lisa Servon, a professor at The New School.