Payment processing

Proponents of a plan to get the Postal Service more involved in banking say it would restore profitability. Actually it would lose more money.

Banks are under competitive and regulatory pressure to either compete or partner with fintechs that support services such as mobile payments, and credit unions are in the same boat — though with a very different challenge at the start.

Issuers like Chase and Citi that added installment features to compete with digital lenders will need to think beyond traditional card options.

U.S. firms have been reliant on data aggregators like credit bureaus and other data companies to provide identity verification services, says Entersekt's Jennifer Singh.

Kenneth Montgomery, a top executive at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, will head the push to make faster payments available across the industry in the next four to five years.

Gregor Dobbie is taking on the role of CEO of Vocalink as the company looks to expand its B2B payments business in the U.K.

The Electronic Transactions Association has named Jodie L. Kelley as its new CEO to replace Jason Oxman, who left in January.

Were the Fed to develop its own payments platform, it would be expensive, duplicative, inefficient, and curtail development of real-time services, argues the National Taxpayers Union's Thomas Aiello.

Checkout-free technology is very limited in availability and very much a work in progress, but developers and investors are relying on its promise to accelerate payments' broader evolution from streamlining execution to determining intent.

Fintechs can help integrate payments into banking systems while solving the compliance problem, says Joel Sherwin of Weinberg Gonser LLP.