Thwart Mediocrity

if Walmart succeeded at doing it, how bad would it really be for the consumer?

Hat tip to Colin for his post here.  I remember the protests within the banking industry well.

Robbie got it right:

Changes to the member business lending cap. That’s a game changer. A partnership developed between FSCC, CUSC, PSCU, Fidelity, etc that enables all credit unions to become shared branches automatically. That’s a game changer….

Daily life at a credit union isn’t glamorous and fun. It is trying to find a way to help a teller do a process 1 minute faster. It is about finding a better checking product to match up with the maturity of your credit card portfolio.

I hope these points don’t get lost in his post. (BTW, I would argue that daily life on the CU side of the desk is, indeed, fun.)

On Banking Kismet, George highlights Apple’s e-Wallet application patent submission covered on Patently Apple.

See the aggregation discussion in part 2 of the story:

Types of Accounts: As illustrated by the screen 120, the presently stored accounts may be organized and displayed in accordance with certain categories. For instance, the account information screen 120 may display a first listing 122 of presently stored credit card accounts, a second listing 124 of presently stored banking accounts, a third listing 126 of presently stored non-cash accounts, as well as additional listings 128 of other accounts, which may include charge cards or loyalty cards associated with a specific vendor or retailer.

I could easily see PFM eventually seamlessly integrated into the payment device itself.  It’s one thing to have PFM tools after a purchase to analyze what you’ve done and to help you make decisions about what to do next in managing your finances.  What happens if that guide is built into the device through which you’re paying?

Regarding the wallet becoming fully digital, it’s not if but when (cliche alert!).

And if not from Apple, who?

DJ and the Bear has quickly turned into one of my favorite blogs.  As Mark McSpadden would say, it’s a five on the nerd scale (if you remember that, you’ve been around CU blogs for a while).

From a great post today called “The Orphan Decade” where DJ discusses lessons that should’ve been learned:

Perhaps the one area in which more lessons were there to be learned was in financial institution arena.  Since money makes the world go around, it’s vital to keep that money flowing.  Yet, we came within a hair of witnessing the upending of the entire financial structure.

So, we should have made progress on getting away from the “too big to fail” mentality which almost destroyed the system.  We should have made progress on derivative market reform, especially regarding credit default swaps. We should have made progress on reforms in accounting and loss recognition on bank balance sheets.  We should have started to deal with long-term solutions for Fannie and Freddie other than throwing in the towel and just having the Treasury and taxpayers take on the burden of the mortgage business.  We certainly should have learned that bankers will always shoot-for-the-moon when given access to virtually free money for funding.

Yet, nothing has changed.

The lessons were there for the learning, but we (collectively speaking with the government) seemed be paralyzed by the initial shocks and then were inept at developing and implementing any future vision.  With global investment bankers now emboldened by the “miraculous” recovery and the lack of governmental demand for changes and protection, the opportunity for reform is slipping away.  This means the opportunity for the next meltdown is around some corner ahead.