Brian Russell

🚀 Brand new blog post on modernizing #ACH processing for banks and credit unions from Kent Brown (CTO) and Blake Herring (Staff Engineer and ACH Expert). 🌐💸 The Automated Clearing House (ACH) network is the backbone of electronic payments in the U.S., but it's facing significant challenges in today's digital age. 🔍 Explore the Challenges: Learn about the obstacles banks and credit unions face with outdated ACH processing systems and how manual entry woes impact operational efficiency. 💡 The Solution: Discover how Payment Manager bridges the gap between traditional banking systems and modern digital environments, offering advanced features like API-driven initiations and automated processing. 📈 Results and Impact: Dive into the transformative results experienced by our customers, including boosted operational efficiency, increased reliability, and enhanced transparency. 🔑 Why It Matters: Understand why modernizing ACH processing is crucial for community banks and credit unions to stay competitive in today's rapidly evolving financial landscape. Read the blog and start a conversation: https://lnkd.in/gFtPAFvg #ACH #Fintech #Innovation #Payments #DigitalTransformation #banking #creditunions

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So you think you know how credit works? Check out this piece from Bloom Credit on the obstacles to credit data reporting — and how those roadblocks impact everyday consumers. A more inclusive credit ecosystem means something has to change — and that something is the control consumers have over what gets reported and how. Check out this article on how consumer-permissioned data is changing the face of the entire credit ecosystem. https://lnkd.in/gTcx5GY6 #credit #lending #creditscore #creditdata #furnishment

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Daniel Baum, Senior Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, recently shed light on the pricing strategy for the new FedNow instant payments system during the "Future of FedNow" event hosted by Payments Dive. Launched in July last year, FedNow aims to revolutionize the U.S. payments landscape by enabling transactions to be settled in seconds. The system, available 24/7 including weekends, is set to be the most significant update to the nation’s payments system in decades. In setting its fees, the Federal Reserve decided to align them with those charged by RTP, the incumbent system operated by The Clearing House. This approach was chosen to maintain market stability, as FedNow begins its journey in the highly competitive payments space. Despite starting with zero payments, FedNow has seen promising growth, now boasting around 700 financial institutions up from just 35 at its inception. Baum also highlighted the challenges and opportunities ahead for FedNow, including its cautious approach to pricing that could evolve as transaction volumes increase. The system also focuses on addressing security concerns by enabling secure communication between transaction parties and considering the creation of a network directory of users. As FedNow continues to develop, it remains a work in progress, with the Federal Reserve actively engaging with industry stakeholders to refine its features and expand its adoption. The goal is not just to innovate but to create a robust network that benefits all users, paving the way for potential future applications such as cross-border payments.

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We meet weekly with businesses that are leveraging legacy technology to run their business. This is negatively impacting customer and employee experience, not to mention the risk of unsupported platforms and software. We see a stark contrast between organizations that are innovating and those that are not. ChoiceOne Bank is one of those organizations that are innovating and breaking an industry mold. I can't emphasize enough the importance of establishing a roadmap and a plan to position your organization for the future. Be nimble while providing an exceptional employee and customer experience!

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It’s never a great sign when “account compromise” and “unprecedented scale” share the same headline. As more companies and service providers look to deter compromise of their internal and federated networks, there has been explosive growth in the onboarding SSO solutions, and the additional security those solutions can provide through simpler IAM (think JIT provisioning etc) and MFA. This is a good thing. However, service providers need to start implementing customer-facing phishing-resistant authentication such as FIDO2/U2F On the government side, SP 800-63 revision 4 can’t come soon enough. I’m excited to see what’s in the final version of Revision 4. At the end of the day, further forestalling the demise of the password era is ill-advised. This makes it so much more important for providers like banks and telcos to focus now on how to securely implement robust customer identity enrollment into these solutions to avoid ATO and scams. For example, if mobile devices with passkeys are going to be used (which I think is a fantastic and cost-effective option), the identity enrollment stage needs to be just as strong as the authentication itself. Verifying identity through SMS/Email OTP during enrollment, for example, is not a huge impediment to fraudsters. We see it all the time. How then will your organization do it? Doing it right takes creativity and thoughtfulness. #cybersecurity #fraud #ATO #DigitalAuthentication

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I spoke to some smart #payments people this week for an update on #instantpayments. One of the best quotes came from Peter Tapling, APRP: “If banks only ever did things that people were asking for, we’d still be exchanging shells on the beach.” Lots more insights in the article from Peter Davey, Richard Crone & more >> https://lnkd.in/ewrEHJ8G

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Banks and credit unions have enough on their plates without trying to build out new card payment flows. But—there’s a huge opportunity for them in offering card-based instant transfers. Pull-from-card and push-to-debit transactions are growing, serve many popular use cases, and can drive engagement, grow deposits, and generate revenue. Regardless of the benefits, most regional and community financial institutions lack the capacity to become principal members of Visa Direct and MasterCard Send. Moov takes on the complexities involved and makes it easy for financial institutions to offer these kinds of transfers—and a lot more—through a single, simple API integration. Read more from Matthew Thomason about how we make it happen.  #fintech #payments #banking https://lnkd.in/gUX6zJQp

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The The Wall Street Journal recently ran a great article about the increasing aversion from merchants to cash payments and the rise of “reverse atms” and providers like PayNearMe to address the desire to push cash from registers and bill payment. This trend uncorks a whole lot of policy debate given that cash usage is negatively correlated with income and a bastion of the underbanked. Here’s my take: I do NOT want a cashless society but in a free market I think it’s okay for merchants to design their payment preferences and charge commercially reasonable fees for the friction cash presents in operations. It’s a slippery slope to the privacy of cash going away so I would like to see a “Maginot Line” from that perspective. Tony DeSanctis , Ron Shevlin , Anne Arvia and Brandi Gregory - what do you think makes sense here? #payments #cashlesssociety #smarterbank

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FIS has teamed up with Lendio to launch digital lending for SMBs 👏 ☁ 🏪 FIS' SMB Digital Lending leverages the cloud to provide fully automated decisioning AND loan boarding by focusing on smaller borrowers; and by combining large-scale data science and ML with loan underwriting expertise, it helps banks profitably source, underwrite, AND fund SMB loans of ANY size! 🏦 💰 SMB Digital Lending is also built to complement any FI’s current technology stack, including loan servicing solutions from FIS and other providers, who are seeking to make it EASY to adopt and provide an industry-leading digital customer experience for small businesses. 👨‍💻 “FIS’ SMB Digital Lending solution is a game-changer for financial institutions and small businesses alike,” said Steve Sabin, SVP, Division Executive, FIS Lending. “By partnering with Lendio, we are leveraging our unmatched scale and reach in the banking industry plus Lendio’s advanced small business underwriting technology and empowering financial institutions to profitably serve their small business customers. The expansion of our digital banking capabilities illustrates FIS’ commitment to serving the entire money lifecycle—whether at rest, in motion, or at work—and I look forward to seeing the positive impact the solution brings.” Read more on the link below! 👇 Brock Blake #FIS #businessfunding #digitallending #smallbusinessloan #digitalbanking #fintech #fintechnews #fintechecosystem

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Coforge specialist fraud analysts screen customer and other bank checks across multiple critical parameters and identify hundreds of possible fraudulent cases on a daily basis. This has reduced the bank fraud verification significantly, with ~$45M of potential fraudulent savings last year, and over $100M with nearly 10,000 alerts over last 4 years. Process-reengineering and AI is further enhancing the fraud detection and saving millions in fraud related penalties for the client bank! #financialcrime #fraud #AML #compliance #banking #generativeai

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✔ SMB customers will switch primary banks if/when they receive highly personalized advice and leverage self-service digital tools that save them time and money! In addition, offering real-time access to insights that help better manage cash flow. ✔ Community FIs: You can own the SMB direct deposit relationship by removing third-party payment providers! #fintechbetter #communitybanks

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I’m honored to be cited, along with data from J.D. Power’s 2024 Digital Wallet and U.S. Merchant Services Satisfaction studies, in this report from PYMNTS Intelligence and Ingo Payments! The report does a great job of exploring the rising popularity of digital wallets at the till and for other use cases. A great read on this critical phenomenon in payments.

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