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Epson has come out with "EcoTank" all-in-one printers that use a large ink tank, rather than smaller ink cartridges. One EcoTank equals about 20 standard ink cartridges, but you can expect to pay more than $300 for one of their EcoTank printers. Plus Epson’s ink tanks are refillable on almost all EcoTank printers, allowing you to buy refill bottles starting at $13 each or $52 for a set.
Sage Sustainable Electronics, an electronics recycler based in Columbus, Ohio, has created an IT products database representing 9,000 manufacturers and 11 million equipment models. The database, called the Sage BlueBook, provide pricing on network storage devices, routers, switches, servers, PCs, office machines and more. The company competes with other firms that deal in used electronics such as Gazelle and MarkITx.
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Hardware Section Sponsored by
MVi |
Qualys announced the availability of Qualys AssetView, a free cloud-based asset inventory service that enables organizations to search for information on any IT asset where an agent is deployed. The service provides a continuously updated inventory of asset details, and the company claims that their agent has little resource impact and keeps itself up-to-date with no need to reboot. They also say that the service helps keep track of the proliferation of virtual images inside and outside of the environment.
How much is each hour of down time costing your bank? There is a Recovery Time Calculator that allows you to evaluate your recovery time and recovery point objectives, and provides you with estimated downtime costs based upon your operations. It is available here: http://tools.datto.com/rto/
Tablet kiosks are becoming popular for more and more applications primarily due to their low cost. A tablet kiosk can often be purchased for less than $1,000, while traditional display kiosks generally range from $5,000 to $10,000 and higher. However, peripherals can be a challenge for the tablet design and drive the price up dramatically. Adding items such as biometrics, printers, card readers and other devices can sometimes make it more efficient to deploy traditional display kiosks.
Elan Financial Services and Nautilus Hyosung America claim that they have helped a New York-based bank deploy the first cash recycling system installation in the U.S. They are using the Nautilus Hyosung MX8800 cash recycler which is an EMV-enabled unit equipped with five configurable cassettes for multi-denomination note dispensing and depositing. The companies say that this system significantly reduces expensive cash in transit activities.
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ATMs/Kiosks Sponsored by
Heritage Industries |
The Global Mobile Banking Report finds that mobile is currently the largest banking channel by volume of transactions, and forecasts that mobile bankers will comprise over 25% of the world’s population in the next four years. KPMG was one of the authors of the report and they recommend that banks investigate the potential of adding new services to their mobile banking platforms such as virtual customer support, personalized offers, social media sharing and cloud storage. They should also invest in up-and-coming mobile-enabled technologies such as wearables and augmented reality as they proliferate because the firm notes that "mobile banking is clearly supplanting all other channels as the main portal between the bank and the consumer."
According to research from Tractica, consumer use of mobile payment wearables will top $500 billion in transaction volume by 2020. The data suggests the wearable payments industry, coupled with the increasing use of NFC contactless payments technology, will result in a compound annual growth of 177 percent in transaction volume within the next five years. The research firm predicts wearable payments will comprise 20 percent of total mobile proximity transaction volume in retail by 2020, but less than 1 percent of total cashless transactions.
Netherlands-based ING Bank is introducing voice-activated payments as an extension of its mobile banking app. This will be in addition to "Inge" which is their mobile virtual assistant that delivers a conversational experience to users. This new option will enable customers to use voice as an authentication element instead of passwords and PINs.
The Citrix Workspace Cloud is built on the notion of a personal "work space" that includes all the desktop, Web and mobile apps a user needs, along with data, documents and collaboration tools. Work spaces can be tailored for each user, so executives, tellers and customer-service reps, for instance, can each get the mix of apps, desktops, data, mobility and networking services they need. IT department can choose what clouds or data-center resources to use in delivering their users' work spaces, allowing them to merge on-premise and cloud environments as needed. The company says that this solution allows for a more secure and flexible work environment, and offers a test drive online which includes a walk-through of the process of publishing a pre-designed work space and access to the results for up to five people.
Pindrop Security announced the latest release of its Fraud Detection System, which provides new tools to assist fraud analysts and call center technologists, including on-demand call playback, advanced machine learning and analytics to enable fraud analysts to more effectively identify and predict fraudulent activity. Pindrop Security’s Fraud Detection System 2.4 combines the company’s Phoneprinting technology and voice biometrics capabilities with an analytics-driven workspace to help with the detection and remediation of phone fraud.
Online and Mobile Banking:
Using Digital Technology to Create Value for Customers
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Cognizant - http://www.cognizant.com
Read Steven DeLaCastro's comments: http://www.banktt.com/Cognizant.pdf |
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Javelin Strategy & Research - http://www.javelinstrategy.com
Read Mary Monahan's comments: http://www.banktt.com/Javelin.pdf |
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Social media analysis can be difficult, but one tool for Twitter called ManagerFlitter can help. The platform provides tools to:
- Sort your followers/following lists by a range of criteria
- Find out when most of your followers are online and schedule tweets appropriately with their PowerPost feature
- Track who unfollowed you
- Track keyword mentions
Pinterest, which characterizes itself as a "catalog of ideas" rather than a social network or photo sharing website, counts more than 1.3 billion pins about managing money. Bank of America has seen success by created boards such as "buying a home" and "travel plans" that link to its Better Money Habits website. Pinterest currently drives 30 percent of BofA's social media traffic to this money management website which is geared toward millennials.
Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
Today there are over 50 billion PIN, signature and prepaid debit transactions in the U.S. every year, according to the Federal Reserve - almost twice as many as credit, the next most commonly used non-cash payment method. The average active cardholder conducted 23.2 debit transactions (POS and ATM) per month last year, according to The 2015 Debit Issuer Study, commissioned by PULSE. In 2014, regulated FIs earned a weighted average of $0.24 per debit transaction, and exempt FIs earned $0.40, according to the study. The study compared transactions over the past 10 years:
Monthly POS Transactions per Active Debit Card
- 2005: 16.1
- 2014: 21.2
Annual Spend per Active Debit Card
- 2005: $7,807
- 2014: $9,291
Average Ticket Size
- 2005: $40
- 2014: $37
Monthly ATM withdrawals per Active Debit Card
- 2005: 3.4
- 2014: 2.0
A blockchain is a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of data records that are encrypted against tampering and revision, even by operators of the data store's nodes. It is a global network of computers that maintains a bookkeeping system to record and verify every transaction, e.g., Bitcoin transactions. However, it can be used for virtually any type of low-cost money transfer. Startups Abra and Beam, among others, are using blockchain for their peer-to-peer money transfer process, while Align Commerce, a global payments company, makes it possible to pay employees stationed overseas and international invoices using their blockchain platform. While international payment models average $40 to send a wire and $20 to receive one with additional fees for foreign exchange costs, Align Commerce is able to charge no fees due to their use of blockchain technology and offer a tiered pricing structure averaging a 1.9 percent spread on foreign currency transactions.
Nearly 100 Internet access providers have joined Google to offer gigabit Internet access service (all priced in the $50-$150 per month range). The lower costs of building and operating a gigabit Internet access network means that smaller ISPs, municipal power utilities, cities and real estate developers have become gigabit ISPs. Optical cable has become much more flexible, so it can be easily run inside homes and buildings, and the total cost of installed gigabit and faster fiber optic cable infrastructure has dropped 80 percent during the last decade.
MarketWatch is reporting that there have been DDoS extortion threats against more than 100 financial firms recently. The FBI reports that they continue to see a large number of extortion attempts by groups demanding Bitcoin in exchange for not disrupting an organization’s website. Many security experts call for better technical planning as good way to defend against threatened or in-progress DDoS attacks. They also recommend alerting law enforcement agencies about the threat even if attackers do not follow through.
Call center agents are increasingly being asked to be technical support specialists as more and more calls come in related to the bank’s digital banking platform, including access, connectivity, functionality and using the bank’s mobile app. Technically-savvy agents are needed to answer questions about mobile banking functionality that may include troubleshooting the type, make, model and operating system of the caller’s phone. Contact center employees also have to field questions about deposits that may originate from a range of sources: ACH Direct Deposit, mobile RDC and ATMs. The bottom line is that contact center agents will need more training in order to be able to field these types of complex questions.
