Bankers’ Bank Hosts Payments Strategy Webinar – Recording Available
Matt Sitkowski kicked off the webinar with an overview of Bankers’ Bank’s products and services and a discussion of the key role that payments services play in our success and that of our community bank customers. After Matt’s introduction, Jason Hafner provided details on the payments trends we have seen year-to-date in 2020.
As expected, Image Cash Letter (ICL) volumes have continued their long decline as more and more checks are replaced by electronic payments. While this trend is slower for commercial checks, the direction is clear and community banks of all sizes should be anticipating customer needs by ensuring they have a powerful suite of non-check payment options ready for adoption. In funds transfers, Bankers’ Bank has seen an increase in larger dollar wires, in part the result of mortgages, both new and refinanced loans. ACH volumes have continued their steady climb, with significant increases in Same-Day ACH. We believe that the addition of a third processing window in March 2021 will further this growth in Same Day items. Not surprisingly, paper-based international transactions have declined as a result of COVID, but electronic payments have kept growing as customer business overseas continues despite the pandemic. And finally, Jason relayed that Payments & Cash Management continues to innovate in payments, with upcoming expanded international processing hours, enhancements stemming from extended Fedwire and National Settlement Services coming in March of next year, and an ongoing review of future use cases for the ISO 20022 format.
Next, Todd Koehn reviewed the state of Faster Payments. Todd noted that Bankers’ Bank’s Funding Agent solution for The Clearing House’s RTP® Network is live and adding customers. As The Fed’s FedNowSM solution matures, Bankers’ Bank will stay closely engaged to provide services on this and any future Faster Payment rails. With consumer and business customers embracing digital offerings from non-banks, Todd stressed the need for community banks to stay abreast on the future of payments and to offer competitive products with the help of partners like Bankers’ Bank. When implementing Faster Payments solutions, most community banks will connect via a certified third party, which will assist with transaction processing and item posting. In addition to a partnership with Bankers’ Bank for liquidity management, making the right choice on this third party will go a long way towards making a Faster Payments solution successful. The best third parties are developing payments hubs to support the full range of payment options and help manage bank operations in today’s no downtime, 24×7 payments world. Todd closed his comments by discussing the importance of integrated systems and effective controls as banks build out payments use cases. These might include person-to-person and account-to-account bill pay for consumers and Request for Payment messages for business and government customers.
For customers who weren’t able to attend, or just want to watch it again, we recorded the presentation.