Main Street Matters Blog

Digital transformation is the 2022 payments phrase of year. You can’t attend a meeting without hearing about its importance in the financial services landscape, and when you consider that nearly nine in ten Americans are now using some form of digital payments, you understand why it needs to be a top priority.

Bob Dylan once said, “There is nothing so stable as change,” and I have found that to be true, particularly as we look to embrace modern technologies and the companies that enable them.

Even if you aren’t hearing the words “faster payments” or “instant payments” directly from your customers, trends and research show the demand is there – and rising. Recent Federal Reserve surveys reveal growing interest in faster payments

When I attended FinovateFall in September, I was struck by its palpable energy. Not only was it the most well attended Finovate to date with roughly 1,800 attendees and 64 participating companies, it was a widely collaborative conference, converting what had once felt like a competitive environment into one of enablement.

In the first half of 2022, there were 817 data breaches in the U.S., and combined with data leaks and data exposure, they impacted more than 53 million individuals. These are alarming numbers, but they could have been much worse without the use of some form of multifactor authentication.

The consequences of uncoordinated regulatory standards at the federal level are creating an artificial problem at the local level, potentially endangering many community banks’ ability to lend to local customers.

The Venture Center, ICBA’s leadership bankers, and our ThinkTECH Accelerator cohorts demonstrated the importance of community bank-fintech collaborations at last month’s VenCent Summit. It was an opportunity to showcase the evolution of our Accelerator alumni and reiterate the value of our ThinkTECH initiatives.

In 2020, nearly 18 million Americans were defrauded via digital wallets and person-to-person (P2P) services, according to Javelin Strategy & Research. With numbers like that, P2P solutions like Zelle have come under fire, and issues are escalating.

Talent recruitment and professional development has always been a critical issue for community banks, but today’s job market is different. The impact of the “Great Resignation” has placed the workforce in the driver’s seat. Even so, as nimble, local decision makers, community banks have a big opportunity to stand out from the crowd of potential employers.

Despite ICBA’s persistent communications on the negative impact of Durbin Amendment interventions on payment card systems, this latest iteration of Durbin only compounds the prior harm and furthers the misguided policies of the past that will inevitably lead to significant disruption in credit markets and consumer spending, if passed.