The recent BAI Payments Connect 2016 conference and expo, held in San Diego March 7–9 event offered a forum for thoughts on the current and future convergence of banking and payments systems. The event consisted of three tracks or “summits”: The Future of Payments Fraud, Payments Strategy, and Enterprise Payments Operations.
A wide variety of timely and relevant topics was covered in the summits, including payments innovation, enterprise fraud and risk management, the increased use of tokenization in the market, mobile wallets, biometrics, leveraging data analytics. Each summit included well-prepared presentations and thoughtful observations in panel discussions.
I had the opportunity to moderate a panel of three industry professionals addressing the topic “Augmenting Payments Capabilities in an Omnichannel Environment.” The panelists were Karl Dicker, Senior Vice President, Head of Enterprise Payments, Capital One; Doug Gross, Division Executive Enterprise Payments Americas FIS; and Patricia O’Donnell, Senior Vice President, Key Bank. They shared their insights on issues related to the topic such as key considerations for omnichannel readiness, trends in channel usage, banks developing their own mobile wallets, and the primary challenges faced by financial institutions in creating a compelling omnichannel experience. The session was well attended, and the interaction lively and informative.
A session titled “Insight and Updates on the U.S. Payments System Improvement Initiatives,” offered a glimpse into the Federal Reserve’s Payments System Improvement Task Force’s progress to date and planned initiatives. One of the more noteworthy initiatives is an open invitation for organizations to submit demos of suggested faster payment solutions that can be vetted by key industry representatives. The goal is to deliver examples of potential improvements in the payments process, including tangible solutions for the short term and beyond.
These are but a few of the event themes and topics. And as we’ve seen for the past several years, innovation in banking and payments is a top priority. Stay tuned for more updates on these (and other) initiatives in the near future.