Lauri Giesen

Lauri Giesen has spent more than 25 years writing about banking technology and payments for numerous business and financial publications. In the 1990s, she founded and edited Financial Service Online, a magazine covering Internet-based forays into banking and investment services.

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Jul 3, 2018

Bankers hear the same advice again and again: Protect your customer data. Strike that. Replace “advice” with “imperative.” No, wait. “Urgent warning.” That’s more like it, given the tumultuous tenor of the times. Fretting experts opine […]
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Jun 15, 2018

Data, data and even more data. Data ad infinitum. Data absurdum. Data ad nauseum. It’s enough to clog up your computers and boggle your mind. Executives at TD Bank know that data feeling, especially when they prepare compliance risk assessments. On...
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Apr 19, 2018

Perhaps you’ll see this one coming like an angry regulator pacing up to the door. But if you wonder what federal mandates, a motorcycle, a baby boomer hairdresser and a blown business opportunity might have in common, read on. Our story...
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Mar 15, 2018

Attorney Michael Dailey has tough decisions to make when he advises his bank clients how to adhere to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) regulations on fiduciary responsibilities. If he tells them to continue with compliance changes […]
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Feb 28, 2018

When the senior executives at Citizens Bank of Edmond, Oklahoma first considered signing up for Apple Pay nearly three years ago, the scenario resembled that faced by other community and mid-sized banks: lots of obstacles ahead. […]
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Dec 4, 2017

In the U.S., paving the path to faster payments requires patience. Lots and lots and lots of patience. For when it comes to the Federal Reserve’s work with the Faster Payments Task Force, there has been […]
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Nov 6, 2017

Consider these three examples of how the financial services industry has reached out to a now celebrated (yet once isolated) demographic with intentionality all but inconceivable a generation or two ago: In a recent advertisement for […]
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Jul 13, 2017

John Leekley likes to vacation at a remote cabin in Upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains. But as CEO of RemoteDepositCapture.com, he always looks out for how different businesses handle their payments. This may not be as […]
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Jun 14, 2017

Many banks think they’re hip with social media. Too many. But the truth is, too many aren’t too hip: They slap some product information and pictures of their branches on Facebook, get a few customers to “like” their page—and slap...
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Mar 31, 2017

When BBVA Compass rolled out its mobile check deposit service four years ago, it got a number of mostly tech-savvy customers to take photos of their checks and deposit them over their smartphones. But as is […]
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Feb 13, 2017

Apple Pay. Affirm. Bitcoins. Samsung Pay and Android Pay. And: Don’t forget online consumer finance programs that let customers finance high-priced goods … in their shopping carts. Money may not grow on trees, but it can […]
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Jan 24, 2017

Bankers have heard it hundreds of times, or been sold it, if you will: If branches are to survive, they must shift from transaction-oriented institutions to sales centers. Yet what about the surprising notion of a […]
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Jan 4, 2017

By now, it’s a growing staple of movies and TV episodes: folks who fall in love with the sexy voice and chill attitude of their mobile phone chatbot. Now some banks want to spark a new […]
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Nov 29, 2016

“Top of wallet.” That was always the goal for bank credit card issuers when billfolds were made of leather, cards of plastic. But now that wallets reside inside mobile phones, and the cards are digital, is […]

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Sep 23, 2014

As an increasing number of consumers use digital channels to handle basic banking transactions, the look and feel of bank branches needs to change – for community banks as well as for larger institutions. “As we […]
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Dec 21, 2012

Mobile banking services can be used as effective tools to help banks sell additional services and improve customer relationships, but only if they are used correctly and in coordinated efforts with other delivery and sales channels. […]

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Sep 12, 2012

Banks often boast about the positive environmental contribution from eliminating paper documents. And that certainly is true; Wells Fargo & Co. alone estimates it has saved more than 200,000 trees in the eight years it has […]
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Aug 27, 2012

The innovative technology of depositing checks by cell phone has attracted some enthusiastic customers. An issue for banks, however, is that the customer segment utilizing so-called “mobile remote deposit capture (RDC)” remains small and fraud concerns […]