Main Street Matters Blog

Your perspective as a community-based, taxpaying business is exceptionally helpful to the people who write and enforce the regulations you (and credit unions) must follow. In this blog post, we’ll touch on our top priorities and give you the tactics you’ll need to help make your banking advocacy resolutions a reality.

The latest iteration of the Fed’s triennial study showed that in 2018, noncash payments¹ amounted to $97 trillion, with transaction volume reaching more than 174 billion. That kind of market opens new opportunities for community banks.

In banking, one thing is for certain – and that is change. With the advent of new technologies and solutions, education will be the indispensable complement to ensure community banks can take advantage of the opportunity these changes afford.

As we welcomed in the new decade, ICBA signaled its ongoing commitment to community banking innovation with the launch of our second ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator program.

ICBA's Kevin Tweddle discusses unexpected benefits of ICBA's ThinkTECH Accelerator program with community bankers John Buhrmaster of First National Bank of Scotia, N.Y., and Scott McComb of Heartland Bank in Whitehall, Ohio.

The oldest Millennials are pushing 40 and are well established in the financial services landscape, but with Gen Z—the elders of whom are college-aged—we have a digital native group with new expectations.

In 2018, Same Day ACH volume reached 178 million transactions, an increase of 137 percent over the previous year. As a readily available faster payments option, and one that many community banks are familiar with, Same Day ACH serves as a practical and immediate option to support your bank.

Community banks have gotten it right again. With the evolution of technology and the rise of a movement to all digital-banking, others within the industry have been chasing new channels with fervor trying to find the silver bullet that ensures their relevancy.

First-party fraud and synthetic identity fraud is an area of growing concern, exacerbated by difficulties of identifying these attacks, but there are ways the industry is fighting back.

ICBA continues to lead the opposition to mixing banking and commerce through exploitation of the ILC loophole, recently expressing strong support for new legislation that would close it.