Hi 5! The Top Five Fintech Stories We’re Following Today, February 6, 2017

Between tailgating at a pre-game party or watching the Super Bowl itself, you may not have had enough time to really dig into the week’s top news. As the halo burns off the big game weekend, regain focus by feasting on the best of Tradestreaming’s weekly coverage.

Inside Chase’s 10-person newsroom

Banks are creating in-house financial news with the hope consumers will forgo that click to Forbes or Yahoo Finance and instead spend more time reading personal finance articles on their own websites. Here’s an inside view into Chase’s newsroom. While this type of content targets readers looking for money help, it is heavily branded and intended to keep bank products in front of customers.

Recent headlines include “Why you should stop comparing your finances to your friends,” “Can money buy happiness?” and “The best times of year to buy a car” – the type of service articles that could easily be found on any number of media sites.

Retailers struggle with mobile payments

Apple, Google, and Samsung have made major investments in payments. Large banks, too. Everyone’s hankering to make retail payments faster and safer – except retailers. For the most part, they’re finding the upgrade to new technology a major hurdle. Oh, and because they’re not seeing a surge in consumer demand to use things like Android Pay and ApplePay, retailers are in no rush.

“Retailers may be looking into the future as opposed to implementing for today,” said Morgan McAlenney, evp of The Integer Group’s digital arm. “A lot of these technologies of the last few years are transition technologies — from QR codes to digital coupons — a lot of these things are transitioning us to a future state we haven’t yet defined.”

Trulioo’s Stephen Ufford: Regtech is sexy

Far from just preventing financial firms from straying too far afield, regulatory technology can be an enabler, incorporating billions of new people into the global financial system. On the Tradestreaming Podcast, we talk to Trulioo’s Stephen Ufford about why he thinks regtech is the sexiest part of fintech.

“We think about how we can help businesses trust individuals enough that they can lend to them,” he said. “We’re covering 4.5 billion people right now. That means that there are people in emerging markets, through all these tools, who can borrow money to start a small business. Those small dollar loans have been proven to impact generations to come. To me, that’s sexy.”

Getting customers out of the bank branch

Mobile banking adoption is plateauing and banks are looking for new ways to get people out of their high cost branches. ATMs are a key tool for banks to get customers to service themselves, but they’re not the end-all be-all. ATMs can’t handle very common transactions that people still wander into a branch to take care of.

While early adopters have taken to mobile banking, financial institutions will need to more actively shepherd the rest of the population to take up the digital channel. In fact, there may be a few stops along the way. Here are three technologies to help get the rest of the population using technology channels.

WTF is proptech?

There are billions of investment dollars flowing to new technologies targeting the real estate industry. From new online financing options to property management tools, proptech is poised to change the way we buy, sell, and manage real estate.

Proptech is predicated on connecting various pieces of the property market, so that participants in the real estate ecosystem (think buyers and sellers but also brokers and lenders) can make better decisions with less friction.

Disclosure: None.

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