Top Trending Topics in Banking

What’s most on our readers’ minds

Fiserv has created the Insights section on Fiserv.com as a place where your financial institution can explore current issues that affect your business, and find helpful information that can give you an edge. Some of our thought leadership captures the attention of our readers as especially timely and important. Here’s a sampling of our hottest trending topics in the first half of 2023 – content your colleagues and competitors are reading, and you should, too.

Payments

No area in financial services has seen more acceleration than payments. In fact, according to the 2022 Federal Reserve Payments Study, the number and/or value of non-cash payments in the American economy are at record highs in every category – debit and credit cards, ACH and checks.

Of course, the explosion of eCommerce, P2P payments and other online transfers has fueled that growth. Consumers have never had more ways to pay, and choosing which method to use can be confusing. Understanding Programmable Payments explains how this modern payment innovation can bring intelligence and clarity into the payment process, making it easy for consumers to select the best payment option available and automatically route payments to that funding source.

All this new payment activity was bound to create new opportunities for fraud, especially in the identity theft/account takeover category – and that complicates the payments landscape for accountholders and financial institutions alike.

The solution is to employ better-coordinated anti-fraud tools in a multilayer environment. In Fighting Fraud With Connected Intelligence, you’ll find a recipe for better monitoring, stronger authentication, alerts and consumer education to keep accounts safe.

Digital Banking

When we use the term “digital banking” today, it doesn’t just mean online and mobile access. It means combining those capabilities to offer a whole range of additional functions that give consumers more control over their financial lives and make it easier for financial institutions to do business.

Digital Banking: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once discusses some of the latest digital applications and uses case studies to illustrate their benefits in increasing accountholder engagement and loyalty. The blog suggests that, at a minimum, digital programs should include online account opening and loan origination, digital payments, money management and card management.

But how does a financial institution begin to use digital tools, both internally and externally, and keep refining those capabilities over the long term? It starts well in advance, with detailed research and a deliberate plan. In 7 Steps to Starting a Digital Banking Transformation, you’ll learn how real transformation often requires new thinking and an evolution of your corporate culture, both in how you manage processes and how you meet the marketplace with your products.

Fintech Innovation

It’s a fact: The fintech revolution is not going away, like some passing fad. Every day, serious amounts of money and mindshare are flowing from financial institutions to fintech companies that provide banking and payment services. Consumers are increasingly turning to fintechs to round out their experiences and build personalized ecosystems of financial services.

The trend is so relatively new that it’s hard to imagine where it will end up. But Trends in Fintech: Fintechs Prepare for an Acceleration of Open Finance provides a look ahead to what’s next, and it’s loaded with revealing facts and statistics.

For banks and credit unions looking to meet this disruptive challenge, the answer is not to fight harder but fight smarter, and to make some intelligent partnerships. That’s the thrust of Fintech Trends for Financial Institutions, which outlines three priorities – stemming potential revenue loss, remaining vigilant for emerging forms of disruption, and focusing investments to deliver fintech experiences for accountholders.

Enjoy our thought leadership articles, and stay tuned for a redesigned Insights page that will enable easier access to the content you are looking for.