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You may have read about a recent development in the ongoing online commerce wars. Visa and MasterCard announced plans to launch a shared pay button for online purchases, replacing their existing Visa Checkout and MasterCard Masterpass payment buttons. American Express also signaled its willingness to join the effort. The resulting changes could become visible on ecommerce websites as early as the 2018 holiday shopping season.

If you work at a bank or credit union and are the worrying type, there is no shortage of things to occupy your mind. However, it’s not what you know that should make you worry. Most often it is what we don’t know that creates more challenges.

For example, there’s a decent chance that for most financial institutions (FIs), vendor contracts are not the source of concern they should be, especially if the supplier is a company you feel does a good job for your institution. Given the numerous issues that must be addressed in the course of business at a bank or credit union, the axiom “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” often serves as a default. This may make it easy to rationalize letting contracts automatically renew with incumbents who are providing satisfactory levels of service.

The reinvention of financial services has been underway for decades. Some may argue it’s been overhyped, but clearly most Americans bank in different ways than they did 20 years ago. This may be a case study of the Bill Gates adage, that humans overestimate the potential for near-term change but underestimate it in the long run.

(Hint: It’s Not Just About Price)

Obviously, every financial institution (FI) wants to get the best possible deal from their service providers. The definition of “best” can vary markedly by FI, however. We’ve found that before entering the vendor contract negotiation process, a cross-functional team is well advised to invest the time to determine what it most wants from the relationship.

Strategic Resource Management joined more than 1,400 other attendees at Consumer Bankers Association’s CBA LIVE in Orlando, Fla. last month to discuss fresh trends and best practices in the retail banking industry. The mixture of informative programming, expert discussions and a host of networking opportunities created an atmosphere that was energetic and engaging.

It’s time the financial services industry, especially banks and credit unions, stop aspiring to be “Amazon-like” in their service delivery. While we are at it, let’s also jettison our desire to have user interfaces and experiences like those of Apple. And, just to make sure we are being completely fair, let’s add Google, PayPal, Venmo and others, to the list of those that financial institutions (FIs) should not worship as role models.

We’ve been preaching for some time the importance of closely tracking vendor contract amendments, subtle moves in transaction volumes, and other sometimes overlooked changes that can translate to meaningful shifts in a financial institution’s (FI) cost base and affect vendor relationships. We now have a real-time cautionary tale to help drive this point home.

Banking is banking, right? Financial institutions (FIs) take in deposits, lend out money, charge fees for a variety of related services, and hopefully have a bit more in the till at day’s end than they started with.  So surely FIs in a neighboring country whose citizens speak the same language (mostly) and transact their business in something called dollars, would be almost identical to ours in the US, right? Nope.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the hottest buzzword in financial services. The nation’s largest banks are placing big-money bets on this still nascent technology, and countless startups are working feverishly to stake their claim to various use cases.

In a recent blog I noted that many financial institutions (FIs) continue to process debit transactions through four or more PIN networks, mainly due to inertia. There are numerous reasons to streamline this process — volume discounts, simplified back-office routines, reduced risk — none of which carry customer impact. Most networks no longer require their logos to be listed on the back of the card, so there’s not even a need to reissue plastic.