Data Drivers

Credit unions have spent decades cementing loyalty among consumers — so much so that a majority of consumers wouldn’t switch for another type of FI. But in the age of FinTech upstarts, CU execs should beware complacency. In this episode of Data Drivers, PSCU CEO Chuck Fagan delves into how tech-driven innovation can strengthen the ties that bind.

Europe’s GDPR privacy regulations may have taken effect, but most businesses are not equipped to handle all of the requirements. Meanwhile, payments operators are preparing for the coming PSD2 world — one designed to foster innovation, but one that may do much less than that in the short term. In this episode of Data Drivers, Karen Webster and Whitepages Pro CEO Rob Eleveld dig deep into these trends and discuss how those two efforts will shape the payments landscape — and how they could make transactions more seamless.

In this episode of DataDrivers, Karen Webster and Vocalink’s George Evers go through the numbers for RTP, and discuss what comes next.

Can you hear us now? There are now over 5 billion mobile phones on Earth – and what they’re being used for varies about as much as culture itself. For this week’s Data Drivers, Vijay Sondhi, CEO at NMI talks with Karen Webster about why mobile payments leapfrogged cards in China, while Australians shrugged off Apple Pay in favor of contactless cards. It's all about consumer habits, Sondhi notes, when it comes to what really makes for a better experience.

When it comes to QSR dining, consumers have a taste for innovation — and chains of all sizes are working overtime to tap into a favored formula. The problem, Bypass Chief Innovation Officer Geoff Johnson tells Karen Webster, is that brands are facing difficulty in figuring out what to put on their digital services menus and how to use data to build the consistently convenient experiences for which consumers are looking.

Halloween comes early this year as we delve into a slew of grisly facts about financial crime in our latest Data Drivers. $1.4 trillion in losses? While 41 percent of crimes go unreported? As David Divitt, VP of Vocalink notes, frightening doings are afoot -- but there are ways to get the money back

Cambridge Global Payments' Karl Schamotta talks about how planning, mindset and technology that can turn opportunity into profit.

Gig workers, increasingly, are embracing project work by choice -- and it's not because they have to. Hyperwallet's Michael Ting tells PYMNTS' Karen Webster that a sea of change is underway in a world where 58 percent of gig workers do not want full time jobs - proving the model is becoming a critical part of the labor force.

There’s 1.4 billion records on the Dark Web. Is anything or anyone safe? In this episode of Data Drivers, Jumio CPO Philip Pointner and Karen Webster chat about what FIs can do to digitally identity-proof the consumer’s chain of trust with their bank.

A podcast that began as a chat about the adoption of Same Day ACH in the middle market turned into a thoughtful - and at times - spirited debate about who really holds the power in the B2B payments world.

The rising cost of fuel isn’t keep drivers off the road this summer, GasBuddy CEO Sarah McCrary tells Karen Webster in this episode of Data Drivers - but it has made them more driven to find the best deal per gallon than ever. But while price is a powerful lever, McCrary noted, there’s only so low operators can go. Which means when thinking about mobile and how to leverage it, the question operators need to answer is how they can create more real touch-points with their buyers - and use those to build real loyalty.

In this episode of Data Drivers, Wirecard’s General Counsel and VP of Compliance and Governmental Affairs muses to Karen Webster that one button to rule them all may be no mere fantasy — it’s just a ways off.

EMV has done wonders to stop fraud via cards at the physical point of sale. The bad buys have moved off the premises and onto the web in due course, which means separating the good transactions for the ill-intentioned ones has gotten a whole lot harder. Featurespace Chief Strategy Officer Matt Mills says in this episode of Data Drivers that real time machine learning can take guesswork out of the equation.

Beyond Uber and Lyft, the gig economy is evolving, with a long tail that places value on plugging gaps in firms' skill sets, boosting gig workers' discretionary spend, too. Hyperwallet SVP of Digital Markets Michael Ting tells Karen Webster in this episode of Data Drivers that the value of the online marketplace lies in matching services and the firms that need them -- and making sure payment is seamless.

Data makes the world go round and CFOs are inundated with all different types of information. The key to making sense of all the data points that stream in from myriad sources, Coupa CFO Todd Ford tells Karen Webster in this episode of Data Drivers, is collaboration across far-flung units within the firm. No easy task when 66 percent of finance professionals do not have visibility into transactions.

Top performing FIs foster a culture of innovation that helps them lead the way in customer relationships – the sticky kind, as noted this episode of Data Drivers. Technology is part of the equation (and so are sandboxes), i2c’s Lisa Fugate, VP of Product Management tells Karen Webster, but mindset matters. The time is right for laggards to take a look at what they do beyond the obvious arenas of P2P, digital and mobile.

Financial stress costs employers $300 billion in lost employee productivity. And in the case of one desperate employee, her job when not having the money to buy her daughters medicine drove her to steal money from the company. That story built a company, FinFit, and President David Kilby and Karen Webster use three other data points to explain how 100,000 employers are using financial wellness platforms - including short term loans - to help employees get financially fit.

After 18 months of depressing headlines on this subject, it would be easy to give up on workplace ethics. But Pat Harned, Ethics and Compliance Initiative CEO, thinks there is some room for some (qualified) optimism. And a lot of work left to do.

Fleet of foot and fickle of mind, consumers are flocking to retailers -- online, and to buy direct.  In the latest Data Drivers, EDITED CEO, Geoff Watts, tells Karen Webster retailers must learn to act like software companies and brands become retailers as data-driven direct consumer interaction emerges as a macro trend.  Three data points tell the story.

By the time consumers are transfered to a call center agent, things have escalated to the point where chatbots have the answers - and a helping human hand is needed. Yet friction abounds where 70 percent of call centers require consumers to read off the same data multiple times, putting information (and frayed tempers) at risk. IntraNext CEO Patrick Brown says there's no magic bullet in the tradeoff between security and consumer experience, but technology (such as biometrics) helps, a bit.https://www.pymnts.com/news/2018/for-call-centers-searching-for-the-seventy-percent-solution/