BANK TECH’S
TURKEYS
THE BEST AND
WORST OF
2010
Page 8
CALLING ROI
The call center’s not just
for customer service.
Page 20
NOT THE SAME
Contrasting business
and consumer mobile.
Page 21
DECEMBER 2010
TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION. BUSINESS RESULTS.
VOL. 23 NO. 12
Year of
Mobile
PAYMENTS
Moves by AT&T, Google,
and card firms grab early
momentum
Leading Off, page 11
THE RECENT VERIZON, AT&T,
Discover etc. deal, along
with a few others that have
made waves in the second half of 2010, suggests
that next year will be the
year that mobile payments
dominate the headlines in
the United States. But which
business model will lead the
industry is still anyone’s
guess at this point; despite
a flurry of announcements
about mobile payment trials, partnerships and other
deals, no single player has
demonstrated a clear advantage over its rivals.
In November the wireless
carriers AT&T Inc., T-Mobile
USA Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. formally announced their long-rumored
mobile payments network
Isis, which is working with
Barclaycard US and Discover
Financial Services to bring
payment-enabled mobile
phones to consumers.
At the same time, Google
Inc. Chief Executive Eric
Schmidt said the next ver-
COVER STORY PAGE 17
Warren’s CFPB
Embraces
Big Data
REGULATION
Hint: no bank will be immune to the scrutiny that’s
coming on cards and other consumer offers
ELIZABETH WARREN WANTS YOUR DATA, AND IF YOU’RE COUNTING ON
cover in the fact that Republicans will take over the House in
January, or that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is
targeted at large banks, you may be taken by surprise. “[Small
banks may] think you’re safe from the CFPB, but you’re not,” says
a banking regulatory attorney who declined to be identified be-
cause of a regulatory action he’s working on. “I can easily see the
CFPB riding shotgun on FDIC exam, on a ‘sampling’ basis.”
But what began as a populist issue has quickly become a tech-
nology story, with President Obama’s interim CFPB head Warren
visiting Silicon Valley and coming out an evangelist for real-time
data analysis. “A 21st-century agency should use 21st-century tools,”
Warren said in an email to BTN. “We hope to have real-time infor-
Leading Off, page 10
ABN’s Map, Block by Block
For IT conversions, it’s using a controversial approach to provisioning.
MERGER CONVERSION
BY THE
NUMBERS
ABN AMRO’S TRIP THROUGH
the past couple of years is
like the juggler who keeps
juggling while more balls
get tossed into the mix—a
series of mergers, sales, pri-
vate ownership and govern-
ment takeovers has resulted
in a brand new bank—but
one retaining much of its old
technology skeleton.
Ownership
Drain
By 2012, Gartner estimates that
of business will own
no IT assets
at all.
