In the News

According to Cornerstone Advisors, more than 80% of financial institutions remain in receive-only mode for faster payments. Instead of treating FedNow as a new settlement mechanism, banks need to reimagine faster payments as the backbone for new product lines.

For credit unions, the biggest hurdle isn’t technology—it’s people, said Cornerstone Advisors consultant Emily Osburn, and overcoming skepticism among staff and executives will require a cultural shift supported by governance, training, and leadership alignment.

The open question around stablecoin is who will reach the scale necessary to drive mass adoption, said Tony DeSanctis, senior director at Cornerstone Advisors. "Tether, PayPal, and now Stripe are all trying to become the primary stablecoin rail to drive the market. With the market cap for stablecoins increasing from $200 billion to $2 trillion in the next couple of years, new players have a chance to see significant growth."

Whether the deal between JPMorgan and Plaid settles the industrywide dispute depends on how other aggregators, fintechs, and banks react, said Ron Shevlin, the chief research officer at Cornerstone Advisors. “The ‘fight’ won’t be over until we see what the other aggregators do and what decisions Plaid makes about passing on the costs.”

The focus on micro businesses is a good fit for Zelle, said Jessica Pinkston, a senior director at Cornerstone Advisors, because small businesses need a portable payment platform that can be taken to the client site or given to the client. Smaller merchants prefer Zelle due to the high cost of processing card transactions, said Tony DeSanctis, a senior advisor at Cornerstone Advisors. "The question is, how many people can we get to adopt Zelle for business as a payment type?"

Whether the deal between JPMorgan and Plaid settles the industrywide dispute depends on how other aggregators, fintechs, and banks react, said Ron Shevlin, the chief research officer at Cornerstone Advisors. “The ‘fight’ won’t be over until we see what the other aggregators do and what decisions Plaid makes about passing on the costs.”

"Chase isn’t charging for the data — it’s charging for access to the data," observed Ron Shevlin from Cornerstone Advisors in a LinkedIn post. "Paying Chase will probably force other aggregators — who may not have the breadth of products Plaid has — to pay for the access to the data."

"Managing operational processes and fraud concerns remain an obstacle for a lot of institutions on the sending side," Jessica Pinkston, a senior director at Cornerstone Advisors, said. "Until we get a lot of institutions set up to send, we won't see a lot of traffic going through these networks, and that will inhibit volume."

Sam Kilmer from Cornerstone Advisors was among the panelists on "Getting beyond the hype - how can financial services providers harness AI, GenAI, and agentic AI to make money or save money?"

But other digital wallets, such as Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, have reached the point of ubiquity, making it more difficult for a new digital wallet provider to compete, no matter who its owners are, Tony DeSanctis, a senior advisor at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker.