Payments

A new era in technology driven by the “Do it for Me” phenomenon is blossoming all around us—and “driven” can be taken literally, what with the advent of self-driving cars.

Five decades after they were first unveiled in Swinging London as marvels of secure, cash-dispensing convenience, automatic teller machines are more vulnerable than ever—thanks to a wide array of attacks that include skimming devices, malware, intercepted communications, outright theft of the machines—and a new technique known as “jackpotting.

Through modern history, banks have pretty much owned the payment business: the rules, the operations, the settlement, the technology advances and most of all, the revenue it throws off.

The ever-shifting mix of cash, checks, ACH and electronic payments methods are now top-of-mind when people discuss today’s in banking—especially as consumers increasingly adopt electronic payments methods in their daily routines.

For wholesale banks, one New Year’s resolution represents equal parts common sense and common good: to take the necessary steps to remain relevant to customers and profitable in 2018.

While principally aimed at curbing the grey economy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ballyhooed demonetization campaign last year spotlighted the war between cash and electronic payments in the mother of all emerging markets.

In the U.

The stereotypes that surround Africa’s track record of innovations—or as some would argue, the lack of them—may well outnumber those dismissive people who still call it “the third world.

You would think that by now that there would be a banking system that allows customers to send instant payments from their accounts to anybody else’s bank account in real time.

For all the dazzling speed high-tech startups and solutions bring to the financial scene, one aspect of the sphere continues to run slow—relentlessly slow.