Welcome To
The Bottom Line

One year ago, almost to the day, Fiserv surprised the payments world by announcing its acquisition of First Data, setting off a wave of payments consolidation that by midyear had narrowed a list of six leading processors and bank service providers down to three. Following this flurry of activity, it was widely assumed that FIS, Global Payments and Fiserv would be occupied with integration tasks for the foreseeable future, potentially leaving payments M&A destined for a short breather. But wait – there’s more.

Will the United States see a recession in 2020? While the economist and political pundits disagree about the when and why, the overwhelming majority of them agree that our current period of expansion cannot last forever. The last time a significant number of the “experts” believed that the “good days” would last indefinitely, the world experienced an economic meltdown unmatched since The Great Depression.   

The Pew Research Center defines Generation Z as anyone born in 1996 or later. A watershed event occurred in 2007 with the introduction of the first iPhone, which maps well to the generational differentiator about Gen Z having little experience with pre-smartphone technology.  

In a recent blog post, we outlined the lessons learned in the year since the UK’s Open Banking regulation took effect. The Open Banking concept is hardly confined to Great Britain, however. Countries as geographically and culturally diverse as Singapore, Australia, Holland and Canada have also embarked on similar endeavours to alter the dynamics of their financial services sectors – thus also altering other interconnected sectors.

Although it’s difficult to envision a similar top-down mandate in the United States, there is growing evidence that many of Open Banking’s features will become part of the American landscape through other means. Yet, depending on where you look, commentators cannot agree on the impact of Open Banking’s introduction in the U.S., whether it be success, failure, positive or negative.