Blog

  • 16 Jan 2024 The Future of Real-Time Payments in Banking Explore the evolution of real-time payments, aligning with modern expectations for immediacy and efficiency. Gain insights from industry experts Jim Colassano (The Clearing House), Jim Maimone (Citizens Bank), and Mark Majeske (Alacriti).

  • 15 Dec 2023 Payments Hub Solutions: A Guide for Financial Institutions Explore the transformative power of payment hubs for financial institutions. Streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and elevate customer experiences with centralized payment solutions.

  • 26 Oct 2023 Unveiling the Future of Payments: A Credit Union Perspective on Instant Payments In today's digital age, credit unions are navigating the shift towards instant payments. Industry experts and credit unions dispel myths and discuss how real-time payments position credit unions at the forefront of this evolution.

  • 09 Aug 2023 Elevating Digital Banking: The Power of Bill Pay in Credit Unions Discover how credit unions can elevate member satisfaction and retention by repositioning bill pay at the heart of their digital experience. Learn about strategies for enhancing visibility, offering diverse features, and using modern solutions.

  • 27 Mar 2023 What are Embedded Payments? Embedded payments are the fuel that will make your digital transformation journey possible. This blog provides a brief overview of what embedded payments are.

  • 14 Mar 2023 A Quick Run-Down on Real-Time Payments and Liquidity Management With real-time payments becoming ubiquitous, many credit unions have decided to move forward with adoption. This blog discusses the decision to use a funding agent or correspondent partner.

  • 16 Feb 2023 What Are Integrated Payments? When you hear the term ‘payments modernization’, you are also most likely hearing the term ‘integrated payments.’ In this blog, we explain what integrated payments mean.

  • 15 Dec 2022 Payment Trends During the 2022 Holiday Season There is speculation about how this year’s events will affect the traditional economic impact of this time of year. Here are the payment trends we expect for retail, e-commerce, and more.

  • 08 Nov 2022 "Payment Services Hub": What it Means Today Historically, payment systems were introduced one at a time as payment methods became available. Since then, they have expanded to include new real-time payment rails. This blog discusses how payment service hubs differ today.

  • 26 Oct 2022 ISO 20022: Why After Almost 2 Decades it’s More Important than Ever ISO 20022 is used by payment systems in over 70 countries. In this blog, discover its benefits and learn what it means for the U.S. market.

  • 15 Aug 2022 Perspectives on BNPL by Generation How do different generations feel about BNPL? When did it rise, and how will it adapt to older generations?

  • 20 Jul 2022 Zoomers: Traditional Financial Institutions Vs. Neobanks How does Gen Z feel about neobanking? Neobanking matches the speed of Gen Z whereas traditional financial institutions are unable to keep up.

  • 08 Jun 2022 Real-Time Payments Without Borders In April 2022, EBA Clearing, SWIFT, and The Clearing House announced their plan to launch a pilot service for immediate cross-border payments. Here’s why that’s huge for payments.

  • 05 May 2022 The Metaverse and Payments: 5 New Developments What is a metaverse? Big businesses are embracing this growing concept, which is becoming more important. This blog discusses five interesting news pieces about the metaverse as it relates to payments.

  • 22 Mar 2022 The Fastest Route to Faster Payments Success The road to faster payments doesn’t have to be a multi-year journey to the starting line. One use case, in particular, could be the fastest route to realizing the promise of faster payment’s potential disruption opportunity.

  • 10 Jan 2022 Payments and the Internet of Things (IoT) Consumers expect payments to work seamlessly with their connected devices as the Internet of Things (IoT) has evolved rapidly. In our blog, you'll find examples of the IoT in action, as well as what it implies for payments.

  • 13 Dec 2021 2021 Year in Review: Real-Time Payments, Crypto and BNPL Throughout 2021, our blog strived to keep clients updated on the latest industry developments and offer our views on future trends in billing and payments. As we close another unconventional year, we’ll revisit the developments we touched on earlier in the year.

  • 09 Dec 2021 Looking Back at AFP 2021 Alacriti had the opportunity to attend the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) conference in Washington D.C. In this blog, we highlight a few takeaways from the event.

  • 16 Nov 2021 Looking Back at Money20/20 Alacriti had the pleasure of attending Money20/20, the world's greatest FinTech event. Its interactive experience emphasized the current industry's biggest trends. We review those trends in this blog.

  • 04 Nov 2021 Zoomers on Campus: Where I Choose to Bank There are various factors that appeal to Zoomers, from newly entering college to determining where they should bank. In this blog we discuss Zoomers and their on-campus experiences.

  • 27 Oct 2021 Zoomer Financial Habits: Loans We discuss the statistics and significance of the many upcoming loans and financial services needs for the Zoomer generation in this blog.

  • 18 Oct 2021 P2P Money Movement - The Retrospective You Didn’t Know You Needed Over the last fifteen years, person-to-person money movement has been the most popular mobile payments trend, and it has continually evolved since its inception. In this blog, we'll look back at where we've been and where we're heading.

  • 14 Oct 2021 Buy Now, Pay Later - Good, Bad, or Somewhere in the Middle? The Buy Now, Pay Later space is really on fire, possibly causing consumers to overspend on things they don’t need or can’t afford. This blog discusses what it means for your financial institution’s payment strategy.

  • 29 Sep 2021 Ways Financial Institutions Can Attract Zoomers Now that you know more about Zoomers, what are the best ways for financial institutions to appeal to this group? Our recommendations are listed here.

  • 23 Sep 2021 Payments Transformation - The Journey from Engines, to Hubs, to Platforms From monolithic engines to payment platforms, payments transformation has been occurring more rapidly. In this blog, we’ll look at how advanced payment methods came to be.

  • 16 Aug 2021 Zoomer Generation’s Core Qualities and Values FI's face the challenge of making their existing customers happy while attracting younger customers. The first step is to understand the demographic you’re targeting. In this blog, we explore the qualities of the Zoomer generation.

  • 09 Jul 2021 Report: Modernizing Payments Infrastructure in the Era of Real-Time Payments We highlight some of the key points from our Payments Infrastructure Outlook: Real-Time Payments Take the Lead report with Mercator Advisory Group.

  • 29 Jun 2021 Biometrics in Payments—Dropping our Collective Masks More businesses are incorporating biometric authentication into their user experiences, including payments. Here are the top five we’re keeping an eye on.

  • 28 Jun 2021 New Players, New Games The best way to stay ahead is to prioritize your digital transformation. Offering ease-of-use and speed to compete with new competition is absolutely necessary and is a natural complement to the security already provided.

  • 24 Jun 2021 Digital Transformation - Your Guidebook Has Arrived Everyone's digital transformation journey is different. This guidebook discusses three phases that may make it more manageable and focused to help bring customers and members better experiences faster.

  • 07 Jun 2021 Flourish or Flop: How to Follow Through on Your Payments Transformation It's estimated that 7 in 10 digital transformation schemes ultimately fail. What this often comes down to is an assumption that employees will effortlessly adapt to the new normal.

  • 11 May 2021 Conversational AI for the Customer Experience Experts predict the proliferation of artificial intelligence will be more impactful than the Internet. Learn how artificial intelligence can help your business streamline operations and deliver a better customer experience.

  • 14 Apr 2021 Faster Tax Refunds Using real-time payment rails could result in tax refunds finding their way from the IRS to your bank account in just a few seconds.

  • 05 Apr 2021 What Faster Payments Can Do for Your Industry Whether it’s a financial institution, merchant, government entity, or individual, there are use cases for faster payments that touch all of us. Alacriti’s Payment Practice Lead, Mark Ranta, discusses more in this blog.

  • 25 Mar 2021 Real-Time Payments and the Non-24x7 Banking Core 24/7/365 access to services is an often noted benefit of the digital era. Organizations that thrive in an always-online digital environment have gained a significant edge in the past year.

  • 12 Mar 2021 What is Payments-as-a-Service? You’ve probably heard of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) but what about PaaS (Payments-as-a-Service)? We define PaaS and outline its key functions and features in this blog.

  • 09 Mar 2021 U.S. Faster Payments - What We Can Learn from the Rest of the World There are 56 real-time payment schemes currently operating internationally. In this blog we’ll hone in on three of the most interesting locations: Japan, India, and Brazil.

  • 24 Feb 2021 Microservices and API Architecture: Lesson 3 Microservices are the key to digital acceleration and the flexibility to keep pace with the industry. In part three of this blog series, we discuss the benefits of using them.

  • 22 Feb 2021 Why RTP, Why Now? Everyone acknowledges the potential of real-time payments, but it’s still relatively new. So why use RTP?

  • 12 Feb 2021 Microservices and API Architecture: Lesson 2 There are two different API prefixes we see regularly, RESTful and Open. In this blog, we discuss those two prefixes and reveal what they mean to your overall API strategy in part two of this three-part series.

  • 10 Feb 2021 Picking Up Speed: FedNowSM Service to Launch in 2023 The Federal Reserve announced they are on track for a 2023 launch of their FedNowSM Service. We discuss what this means for faster payments in this blog.

  • 08 Feb 2021 Microservices and API Architecture: Lesson 1 There can be some confusion associated with the subject of API strategy. We break down the topic in part one of this three-part blog series.

  • 22 Sep 2020 Shortening the Distance Between You and Your Customers Customer-centricity is a key tenet to any digital transformation project. But what does that actually mean? For us, it means meeting your customer, where and when they want to be met, with how they want to pay.

  • 28 Aug 2020 How is COVID-19 Accelerating Digital Adoption In Payments? Part ll COVID-19 is driving a mass movement towards new technologies and a demand for more innovation.

  • 02 Jul 2020 How is COVID-19 Accelerating Digital Adoption in Payments? COVID-19 is changing how consumers pay for things, which is one area where some of the lasting impacts may be felt permanently.

  • 19 Jun 2020 Payment Trends from the Stamford FinTech MeetUp On June 11th, Alacriti’s Payment Practice Lead, Mark Ranta, along with other industry experts came together to discuss the biggest topics moving the payments industry from AI to Faster Payments. Read Mark’s recap.

  • 18 Jun 2020 Rule Changes and the Opportunity for Innovation (Webinar Recap) Alacriti hosted a webinar with Nacha that explored the upcoming rule changes for WEB Debits and what that means for payment workflows from a billing and payments standpoint. Here's our recap.

  • 20 Feb 2020 Benefits of Cloud Computing with AWS Amazon Web Services (AWS) helps businesses thrive by freeing up financial and IT resources, increasing speed and agility, and reducing business risk. With AWS, organizations are better equipped to address market needs and demands.

  • 30 Jan 2020 A Look Back at 2019 and What's Ahead: Orbipay EBPP Alacriti hosted a webinar reviewing 2019 enhancements made to its flagship electronic bill presentment and payment solution Orbipay EBPP. An overview of the offering’s 2020 roadmap was also provided.

  • 13 Jan 2020 Adopting a Loan Payments Solution: Lessons Learned from Tech CU (Webinar Recap) Making loan payments easier for members is key for every credit union. Alacriti co-hosted a webinar with WesPay and Tech CU to discuss the benefits of implementing Orbipay EBPP to better their member experience.

  • 08 Jan 2020 Six Payments Trends to Watch in 2020 Six payments trends to watch in 2020 include unbridled industry change, cloud computing, unified commerce, frictionless data-rich payment experiences, real-time payments and increasing data security and privacy regulation.

  • 18 Dec 2019 2019 Year in Review: Faster Payments, Digital Disbursements, and CAU In 2019, we reported on significant developments in the billing and payments ecosystem in areas including faster payments, digital disbursements, and card account updater. Here’s a look back at key themes we explored in our blog.

  • 21 Nov 2019 3 Payments Stories That Caught Our Eye Alacriti keeps a close eye on news impacting the electronic billing and payments ecosystem. Here’s a summary of recent headlines related to holiday spending predictions, big tech in financial services, and Apple Pay usage.

  • 06 Nov 2019 What We Learned at AFP 2019 Alacriti attended sessions at AFP 2019 dedicated to the latest in payments. Our blog shares lessons learned about paper checks, refunds, and why it’s more important than ever to embrace payments innovation.

  • 09 Nov 2018 5 Things We Learned at AFP 2018 Alacriti attended and exhibited at AFP’s 2018 conference in Chicago. Here are five things we learned during the payments-related presentations that were delivered at the event.

  • 15 May 2018 CS Week 2018 Recap Alacriti was honored to exhibit and speak at CS Week 2018. Here’s what we learned at our session on how utility companies can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbot technology for bill payments and customer service.

  • 14 May 2018 AI Agents that Learn with Experience Businesses of all kinds are utilizing AI to improve the customer experience. While a pre-trained AI agent does a decent job at understanding and performing actions based on user inputs, it’s better to have an AI agent that continues to learn and understand its users better over time. Our new blog discusses the first of three aspects in which a bot can “learn” to do better.

  • 09 May 2018 NACHA PAYMENTS 2018 Recap Alacriti recently participated in NACHA’s PAYMENTS 2018 conference. Here’s a summary of our sessions dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and chatbot technology.

  • 20 Feb 2018 The Elegant Future of Payments Alacriti’s CEO, Manish Gurukula, recently talked with PYMNTS.com’s Karen Webster to discuss how voice-activated user experience (UX) is the next big thing in elegant, streamlined bill payments.

  • 06 Nov 2017 Why Should Businesses Embrace Disruption? Businesses need to get outside their comfort zones to better understand the customer experience and how it might need to change in the future.

  • 02 Nov 2016 Is Bank Innovation Fact or Just Fiction? Banks need to adapt a mindset for innovation in order to be competitive.

  • 25 Jul 2016 The Battle for the Mobile Payments Space The battle for the mobile payments space is a complex one involving a number of participants and interests.

  • 29 Jun 2016 Banks and the Blockchain Blockchain technology is a promising new concept currently being explored for practical application by the financial services industry.