These are the top five articles our readers opened in email this year. Emerging payments articles topped the list, with digital assets holding their own.
Keep in mind that many of the decisions on what makes a year-end list were made months ago. We did not, for instance, write as much about WealthTech this year, and we chose to cover digital assets from the perspective of payments utilities and investment research. That said, here’s what you read.
1 Planning Adoption of the Emerging Technologies Changing U.S. Payments Services
Traditional payment systems that require days-long transaction settlement, high retailer fees, and operational inefficiencies are getting a technology makeover. Led by enabling technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, banking, and payments services are expected to serve consumers with less friction while posing very real operational and security challenges.
2 Insights from Finovate Fall 2023
Our coverage of Finovate’s September show in New York features an interview with Liliana Reasor, founder of SupraFin. We discussed the company’s approach to cryptocurrency research and ratings. This issue also covered uses of cryptocurrency in cross-border payments.
3 Harnessing the Power of Digital Marketplaces
In this post, we defined embedded finance and open banking while putting them in the context of ecommerce marketplaces. The article shows how treasury departments can align with digital services teams to enable FinTechs to stay ahead of the curve, drive innovation, and solidify their position in the digital financial ecosystem.
4 Embracing the Future of Faster Payments
The launch of the FedNow instant payments system put a spotlight on the growth of faster payments systems in the United States over the past eight years. This post covers Same Day ACH, Real Time Payments, and person-to-person platforms Zelle, PayPal, and Venmo. We also focused a post on the next iteration of digital payments by looking at central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenized real-world assets, and stablecoins.
5 Faster Payments for Faster Times
We pulled together many of the year’s themes on emerging payments technologies in an executive technology brief on the basics and growth of faster payments systems in the United States.
My favorites didn’t make the list. Toward Connected Finance, my attempt at pulling embedded finance, open banking, and open finance into a single term, came in at a close #6. Farther down the list was Dedollarization: A Yuan Tale, which sorted out the myths and realities of the U.S. dollar losing its reserve-currency status, a topic of interest early in the year but not mentioned at all by year end.