Customers Demanding Enhanced Mobile Banking Apps

It is more important than ever to deliver a significantly better digital banking experience than is delivered today. Customers want an experience that is fast, easy and secure. More importantly, they want control of their finances at their fingertips.

Find out more from The Financial Brand. Click HERE.

Laying 5 e-Commerce Myths to Rest

Once seen as secondary to in-person sales, the e-commerce channel has rocketed to the forefront since 2020 and is now a key purchasing gateway for many corporate buyers.

Despite this, misconceptions abound, with a number of B2B companies telling us that “customers aren’t ready” and “e-commerce is an immature space for businesses like ours.”

McKinsey & Company’s latest B2B Pulse helps put these notions squarely to rest. Not only are corporate buyers open to e-commerce, two-thirds now rely on digital and remote channels throughout their purchasing journey. While some B2B companies see e-commerce as the purview of cutting-edge tech players, the reality is that suppliers across industries are ramping up their capabilities at astonishing speeds.

The conventional wisdom around B2B e-commerce is due for a reset. These charts expose five prevailing myths.

Read the McKinsey report HERE.

Where Banks & Credit Unions Are Missing the Mark with Mobile Banking

Consumers expect more out of mobile apps than a glorified debit card and checkbook register. Their raised expectations uncover gaps in the quality of major financial institutions' apps in comparison with fintech apps, new research reveals.

Even the best of the best among the mobile banking apps of large financial institutions are doing only “C level” work compared to where they need to be. They are especially lagging in the digital money management functions that have made fintech and neobank apps so popular, according to a major consumer study by Insider Intelligence.

Get the details from The Financial Brand HERE. 

Why Bond Yields Are a Key Economic Barometer

U.S. government bond yields aren’t just a barometer of the economy, they also influence the cost of borrowing, from mortgages to student loans. WSJ explains how they work and why they’re so crucial to the economy.

Battle of the blockchains

To believers, open, public blockchains provide a second chance at building a digital economy. The fact that the applications built on top of such blockchains all work with each other, and that the information they store is visible to all, harks back to the idealism of the internet’s early architects, before most users embraced the walled gardens offered by the tech giants. The idea that a new kind of “decentralised” digital economy might be possible has been bolstered over the past year as the numerous applications being built on top of various blockchains have boomed in size and functionality.

Read the full article from The Economist HERE.

What Trends Are Going To Transform Business Banking in 2022 and Beyond?

Financial institutions are especially vulnerable to losing small-to-medium sized businesses to fintech entrants.

SMBs have typically been underserved when it comes to tech innovation or new digital services. More than six in ten businesses in this large segment go outside their primary bank for business services such as payments and receivables.

An innovation revolution is roiling business banking just as it has consumer banking.

When it comes to sleek new tech and shiny new digital products and features, much of the innovation has long been focused on the consumer side of banking. Business banking, meanwhile, remains stuck in neutral, saddled with legacy tech and processes, many of which are still largely paper-based.

But banks that can ramp up their game when it comes to business banking services stand a good chance of getting a leg up on competitors and driving revenue. Individuals that use business banking services are, after all, consumers as well, and increasingly they are demanding the same type of innovation they get in their consumer lives from their business banking relationship.

So, what trends are going to transform business banking in 2022 and beyond that?

Find out by reading the report from The Financial Brand HERE. 

How to keep innovation moving

Managing the risks and rewards of emerging technologies is a tricky balancing act. How is it possible to maximise the upsides of innovation while minimizing the potential downsides? Read more here: https://econ.st/327bXxU

How Starbucks Operates Like a Bank While Serving Coffee - WSJ

Starbucks, a $124.4 billion company, trails only McDonald’s as the largest restaurant chain by market capitalization. In this video, WSJ’s Heather Haddon explains how Starbucks used technology to garner its loyal customer base and why mobile orders are shifting the chain’s business priorities.

How Companies Are Overhauling Supply Chains to Ease Bottlenecks

The Covid pandemic has strained global supply chains, causing freight backlogs that have driven up costs. Now, some companies are looking for longer-term solutions to prepare for future supply-chain crises, even if those strategies come at a high cost.

How to Build Blockchain Financial Services Applications

Are you a start-up founder or an enterprise leader with plans to launch a financial services application? You might be wondering whether, and indeed, how to use blockchain for this.

Industry observers highlight the steady growth of blockchain in the financial services market.

A Markets and Markets report states that the FinTech blockchain market will grow from $0.23 billion in 2017 to $6.2882 billion by 2023. The report projects a CAGR of 75.9% during the 2018-2023 period.

You are no doubt wondering how to build blockchain financial services applications?  Find out how, HERE.

 

Triple Extortion Ransomware - What it is and how to prevent It

The global surge in ransomware attacks increased by 102% in 2021 compared to the beginning of 2020, and shows no sign of slowing down

The number of organizations impacted by ransomware globally has more than doubled in the first half of 2021 compared with 2020.

The healthcare and utilities sectors are the most targeted sectors while organizations in Asia Pacific are targeted more than any other region.

Since April, researchers at Check Point Research (CPR) have seen an average of over 1,000 organizations being impacted by ransomware every week.

Prominent attacks that have taken place at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 point at a new attack chain – essentially an expansion to the double extortion ransomware technique, integrating an additional, unique threat to the process – that CPR calls the Triple Extortion. 

What is Triple Extortion? You can find out HERE.

Santander finds itself in a Citi moment with $175 million error

As Santander looks to claw back roughly $175 million it mistakenly paid to British customers on Christmas Day, it can look to Citi, on a basic level, for what to expect, what to avoid and what to ask itself.

Citi’s manual transfer of $900 million in August 2020 to creditors of the cosmetics firm Revlon is likely the highest-profile recent case of a bank making an errant, nine-figure payout from its own reserves.

For Santander, the $175 million represents duplicate payments. About 75,000 people and companies received one-off or scheduled payments from 2,000 businesses — in many cases, their employers or suppliers — that have accounts with the bank. Then, they received a second identical payment from Santander.

Find out more HERE.

Workplace Injuries in the WFH Era: A Tale from Germany

Accidents do happen. Everyone's home included. But, here's the thing. Technically speaking, this remote worker got injured on his way to work. 

"The man was working from home and on his way to his desk one floor below his bedroom" when something bad and painful happened. 

One or a thousand steps, does it really matter?

At home, or on the way to the office, does it really matter? 

Well, according to the insurance companies, it does. 

Find our what happened and why HERE.

10 worst password snafus of 2021

Using strong and secure passwords is sound advice not just for your own personal accounts but for any accounts or services you use on the job. In fact, a weak password can create far more trouble for an organization that holds user data and other sensitive information. To show just how much trouble it can create, password manager Dashlane has unveiled a list of the worst password-related security incidents for 2021.

For its 2021's Worst Password Offenders list, Dashlane looked at the year's 10 worst security mishaps that involved hacked or stolen passwords. These fiascos show that advice about creating a strong password is still being ignored by too many individuals and too many organizations.

Read the full list HERE.

Deutsche Bank’s ESG executive slams industry’s greenwashing practices

Kamran Khan, Deutsche Bank’s head of ESG for Asia Pacific, urged the financial services industry to step up its game and take responsibility for its use of ESG and net-zero labels. 

At a time when the possible ramifications of greenwashing practices multiply rapidly, Khan said there is a growing need to put a “reality check” and impose the authority of “saying no” to colleagues or clients trying to misleadingly attach the ESG label to their products. 

“When you look at it, any company can make a net-zero commitment, and come up with a nice little PowerPoint on how they’re going to move from today to 2030 or 2050,” Khan said at a Sibos 2021 panel last October.

Read the full article on bobsguide. HERE.

Top 10 tech trends that will shape the coming decade, according to McKinsey

McKinsey predicts the 10 tech trends will shape the next decade. These include digital connectivity, distributed infrastructure and next-generation computing.

We’ll experience more technological progress in the coming decade than we did in the preceding 100 years put together, says McKinsey. And just 10 tech trends will dominate this shifting landscape.
 

Understanding the effects of this change can help avoid nasty shocks to the system, for both individuals and organizations. Businesses that are making the most of advances in tech are also in a good place to make the most in terms of return on their investments.

Read the full article HERE.

 

What Does a 'Layer 2 Blockchain' Mean?

Since Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008, blockchains have continued to gain popularity.

People have applied blockchain technology to other areas, besides payments, thanks to its decentralised and secure nature.

Scalability is what Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin, calls a component of the "blockchain trilemma."

Buterin's thesis explains that no blockchain network can equally provide decentralisation, security, and scalability. They must sacrifice certain elements to achieve near-optimal functionality.

Bitcoin and Ethereum trade off scalability for security and decentralisation for scalability. That explains why a major blockchain network like Bitcoin can process around 7 transactions per second. For context, Visa's payments system can process up to 24,000 transactions per second.

If blockchain technology must attract more users, it must solve the scalability problem. Several solutions have appeared in recent years, including the now-popular “layer 2” protocols.

Click HERE to find out what layer 2 blockchain means, how it works, and why it’s important for blockchain adoption.

DeFi - Definancializing Productive Activity

As software and hardware engineers around the world are untangling the centralization of the internet, a vocal portion within the enclave of blockchain-based solutions - generally referred to as decentralized finance - or DeFi for short - has emerged. While blockchains provide the building blocks for reliable information and - to a lesser extend value - transport functions - a layer of middleware to the larger concept of cryptographic primitives mapped by protocols, current developments are largely focused on digitally native assets, and their derivatives.

You can read the full article HERE.

Is 'Buy Now, Pay Later' the Future of Consumer Lending?

Some view soaring BNPL as an existential threat to credit cards and traditional bank loans. Others argue there are strong opportunities.

Read the full article HERE

Warren Buffett Leaves The Audience SPEECHLESS - One of the Most Inspiring Speeches Ever

Warren Buffett shares two stories about women who started from nothing and sold their businesses to the legendary investor. This is one of the greatest speeches Mr. Buffett has ever delivered and he also gives really good advice to all entrepreneurs in the audience. Warren E. Buffett is an American long-term investor, philanthropist, business tycoon, and the chairman & CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is considered one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net worth of over 100 billion dollars. Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He developed an interest in business and investing in his youth and made truly incredible stock market returns over his career.