Worth also thinking about the value card brands provide to merchants. Rising surcharges and cash discounts negatively impact the experience and probably have an impact on revenue. Is it worth if? Maybe. www.thestreet.com/personal-fin...

Not shocking that better.com had an awful IPO, the point was a Hail Mary fundraiser. Although they really have been at the forefront of digitizing mortgage lending, there are some strong headwinds to overcome. techcrunch.com/2023/08/27/b...

Interesting to see the idea of fair credit reporting standards being applied to data brokers. This has potential potent impact on open banking aggregators and identity verification vendors alike. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4154371-cfpb-considering-new-rules-to-crack-down-on-data-brokers/

With FedNow now “live” it will be interesting to see how it is used alongside or in place of The Clearing House’s RTP network. What use cases favor either network? What factors factor one network vs the other? Price? Bank coverage? Branding? Conference swag?!

There are headlines that the total amount of credit card debt is over one trillion dollars which sounds bad, but we can temper that with “only” 51% of cardholders carrying a balance, which is 10% lower than 2019 pre-pandemic. That would indicate more people are using their cards to maximum benefit.

There are a lot of opt in consortium data networks in the payment space mostly focused on verification and fraud. Plaid entering the ring is a big splash, but we’re yet to see how they plan to scale their data, as any network only survives based on its breadth. Neat, worth keeping an eye though.

Interested to see if any wallets start integrating FedNow, and how that trickles down to in store, and even e-commerce payments. Having a direct acceptance method for ACH in person hasn’t really had legs, but having a wallet intermediary might have better traction.

Some pretty rough headlines for Mastercard, but like it or not, marijuana is still illegal at the federal level in the US and this is just Mastercard complying with the law, not making a stand.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/27/mastercard-debit-card-marijuana/

One nice thing about FedNow is that it piggybacks on the same Routing and Account Number as ACH. This way downstream merchants (especially those that store credentials on file) will have one less thing to worry about when choosing what rail to use.

The greatest barrier for any new payment system is acceptance, and that will be no different for FedNow. ACH has its limitations, but it also has a rich ecosystem of support (payment acquirers and service providers). For FedNow to accelerate growth a strong emphasis on acceptance is required.

FedNow is here, and even though only 30ish FIs are onboarded, that will grow over time. Merchants especially in the billing space stand to save substantially, even compared to ACH, but, will consumers see those price savings? How will the savings using FedNow trickle down?

Hello Bluesky, my name IS Sky. I think I'll mostly post about how we pay for things, especially in the US.