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News and resources on retail banking, consumer finance and reinventing customer experience in finance.

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Expert opinions

Monica Eaton

Monica Eaton Founder & CEO at Chargebacks911 and Fi911

Age of Entitlement welcomes AI in Banking

AI already runs payments. Every tap, click, or online order is scored by algorithms deciding in milliseconds if it’s safe. Fraudsters are blocked faster than ever, and customers are better protected than they were even a few years ago. So yes, AI is working. Fraud attempts are being stopped before they hurt consumers. We’ve seen real progress. But ...

/ai /retail Artificial Intelligence

Joris Lochy

Joris Lochy Product Manager at Intix | Co-founder at Capilever

UPI’s Free Ride: A Masterstroke - But Can It Last?

Already 2 years ago, I explored in my blog "The UPI Phenomenon: From Zero to 10 Billion" (https://bankloch.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-upi-phenomenon-from-zero-to-10.html) how India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) reshaped the digital payments landscape. UPI has grown into one of the world’s largest digital payment systems, processing o

/payments /retail Payments strategies 2015-2020-2030

Sergiy Fitsak

Sergiy Fitsak Managing Director, Fintech Expert at Softjourn

Why Financial Services Are Betting Big on AI-Powered Analytics (And What Most Get Wrong)

Walk into any bank's strategy meeting today and you'll hear the same refrain: "We need AI in our analytics." But here's what they're not telling you: most financial institutions are implementing AI/BI tools without understanding the fundamental shift required in how they think about data. I've spent years helping fintech companies

/payments /retail Banking Strategy, Digital and Transformation

Alex Malyshev

Alex Malyshev CEO, Co-founder at SDK.finance, FinTech software provider

High-Volume Transactions: Essential Benchmark or Industry Hype?

Transactions per second (TPS) has become the payments industry's favourite vanity metric. Every year, headlines celebrate Visa's 65,000 TPS peaks or Alipay's half a million transactions in a single second. These numbers impress. But for 90% of banks, fintechs, and wallet providers, they are irrelevant - and chasing them is a costly distraction. Wh...

/retail /markets Fintech

Prashant Jajodia

Prashant Jajodia Managing Partner at IBM

Banking's next evolution isn't about efficiency—it's about delight

The Current State of Banking Customer Experience Despite significant investments in customer experience over the past 10-15 years, banks still face a fundamental challenge: delivering truly engaging digital experiences. When we compare digital banking platforms to consumer favourites like Netflix, Uber, or Amazon, the gap becomes apparent. While b...

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Trending

Monica Eaton

Monica Eaton Founder & CEO at Chargebacks911 and Fi911

Age of Entitlement welcomes AI in Banking

Joris Lochy

Joris Lochy Product Manager at Intix | Co-founder at Capilever

UPI’s Free Ride: A Masterstroke - But Can It Last?

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Research

Impact Study

Case Management: The key to revolutionising cross-border payments

While the challenges of case management and inefficient E&I processes are not new, the need to address them is more pressing than ever – especially given the G20’s roadmap deadline and the impending global migration to ISO 20022.  In today’s digital era, end-users expect payments to be faster, cheaper and more convenient than ever before – whether domestic or cross-border. As global payment barriers are overcome, banks are tasked not only with meeting customer demands, but business and regulatory ones too.  Enhanced cross-border payments – as supported by the G20’s roadmap and the richer data that ISO 20022 provides – are becoming a real differentiator, with the capability to unlock tremendous value for institutions. However, while a lot of attention is paid to seamless transactions, one area has historically been overlooked: exceptions and investigations (E&I).  This continues to present a significant challenge for both payment providers and corporates, and is impacting numerous networks and technologies. Yet, if harnessed effectively, E&I tools can help institutions significantly reduce costs, speed up processing times, improve transparency and, by extension, satisfy the G20’s targets.  This Finextra impact study, in partnership with Swift, explores:  The advantages of effective E&I processes;  Why solutions are needed to reach the next level; and  How banks can effectively embed them in their infrastructures. 

312 downloads

Impact Study

Reimagining customer journeys: How can banks upscale experience and boost retention?

To stay competitive and better serve their customer base, financial institutions (FIs) must urgently reimagine their customer journeys — from onboarding to the broader lifetime experience — or risk facing a hit to their market share. Technology has significantly transformed the financial services industry, particularly over the last five years. Challenger banks and fintech firms have rapidly gained popularity thanks to their ability to offer fast, simple, digital services. According to data from Plaid, nearly nine out of 10 consumers were using a fintech application in 2023. This percentage will continue to grow.  Financial institutions (FIs) must urgently reimagine their customer journeys or risk facing a hit to their market share. Indeed, today’s customers are more likely than ever to switch primary banking relationships if they do not receive the services they are looking for. Young, digital natives continue to shape this market, with research revealing that 44% of Gen Z customers have changed their primary banking relationship in the last 12 months. The call to competition cannot be ignored.  But how can FIs innovate to meet these demands, while simultaneously running legacy systems? This Finextra impact study, in association with Hyland, explores how financial institutions can:  Reinvent onboarding and Know-Your-Customer (KYC) processes;  Upscale the overall customer journey;  Look to artificial intelligence (AI) for product enhancement and integration; and  Present real-world case studies for each of these objectives. 

341 downloads

Impact Study

NextGen retail banking: A roadmap to successful modernisation

Learn why retail banks must transition to modern, composable, future-ready infrastructures today – and how they can devise journeys that are tailored as well as cost-effective. A significant portion of the retail banking landscape still relies on legacy systems, some of which can be costly and hamper innovation. According to a report from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), 58% of the UK’s financial services firms use legacy infrastructure for some operations, while 33% depend on it for most of their activities. In North America, the picture is similar, with around 40% of US banks still using the Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) – a coding language dating back to 1959. Some surveys indicate that up to 70% of bank IT budgets are spent on maintaining these legacy systems.   Today, with rapidly evolving consumer demands, technological advancements, stiff competition, and regulatory upheaval, outdated infrastructures are no longer tenable – and risk negatively impacting banks’ efficiency, agility, and customer experiences. So, how can retail banks modernise, while controlling costs and ensuring minimal impact on day-to-day business applications?   This Finextra impact study, produced in association with Oracle, analyses:  The key challenges of legacy banking systems  How to draw up a tailored roadmap for modernisation  How to quantify progress and measure success 

383 downloads

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FinextraTV

What Technological Frictions Exist for Clearing Customers?

Providing insights as part of the new Future of Wealth series, Emma Hagan, UK CEO, ClearBank joins FinextraTV at Money 20/20 in Amsterdam to describe the evolution of the clearing industry across the last decade. Explaining how clearing was later to the digital transformation wave, Hagen lists some of the technological frictions that exists for clearing clients and the solutions that are available.

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Events

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Long reads

Stephanie Storry

Stephanie Storry Consultant at PSE Consulting

How will UK BNPL regulation impact merchants?

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) has quickly become a retail staple in the UK. With consumers increasingly seeking flexible payment options, BNPL services have surged in popularity, promising an easy way to split payments into bite-sized chunks. But with this growth comes a growing wave of regulatory attention around rising default levels and consumer pr...

Sehrish Alikhan

Sehrish Alikhan Reporter at Finextra

Solving modern KYC challenges

In today’s digital age, banking is expected to be seamless, frictionless, and to make it plain and simple: easy. However, with a constantly shifting regulatory landscape, increased demand for hyper-personalisation and desire to be digital – financial institutions have obstacles to overcome to keep up with consumer demand. A pain point in the digit...

Scott Hamilton

Scott Hamilton Contributing Editor at Finextra Research

Why do customers and business leaders diverge on client experience views?

Customers aren’t ‘buying’ companies’ improved customer experience (CX) claims or promises, and company leaders aren’t buying the value of spending more to delight the customer. At least not in large percentages on either side of the commerce spectrum, according to a recent global study. When it comes to the leaders of the companies surveyed, respo...