NACHA Payments 2011 Roundup

It's been a busy few weeks. I rounded out a stretch of business travel with a visit to Austin, Texas for the NACHA Payments Conference. Bob Meara and I spent most of the time catching up with our clients and meeting some new and exciting prospects. My first day in Austin was a doozy, as I had a couple of speaking engagements to take care of weaved in between back to back meetings. I started off the day bright and early with a speaking engagement at a breakfast hosted by Fundtech. The topic on the agenda was, Achieving Competitive Advantage With Cash Management User Experience. Those of you familiar with my research know that I spend a lot of time emphasizing the importance of user experience in online banking, and I was happy to bring this message to the group. In the afternoon, I presented at the NACHA Payments conference along with Leslie Klein, Global Head of Marketing for Citi GTS. The topic of our presentation was, Demystifying Social Media: A Call to Action For Banks. The session was very well attended and there were lots of questions from the audience. There was a particular buzz in the room when I stated that I don't believe banks presently belong on Facebook (more on that later, probably a good topic for a separate blog entry). Overall it was a good conference. The energy was positive and there appeared to be an increase in attendance. I noted an interesting shift regarding conference attendees and topics. Historically, most of the sessions were related to business or corporate banking with emphasis on payments. This year there appeared to be a lot more retail content, with sessions on mobile banking, mobile payments, regulatory issues, etc. There also was quite the focus on healthcare payments with a dedicated healthcare track. All in all it was a good event and I was glad to have made the trip down to Austin. On a personal note, I particularly enjoyed watching the mentalist at the Fiserv booth. Bob Garner has been a fixture at the Fiserv stand for some time now, and I always do my best to steal away and watch him perform for a few minutes. Bob has been able to tell me some pretty uncanny things about myself and my family (with no prior knowledge or prompting), and I have watched him do the same to others. It's a great show - mind boggling, and highly entertaining. I'm thinking of recruiting him to be a Celent analyst - his IT spending predictions and forecasts would be spot on : ) Next stop on my conference calendar is Finovate Spring in San Francisco. Hope to see you there!