I was recently asked by TSYS to write a piece celebrating ten years of payments changes, as they are celebrating their ten year birthday of ngenuity, TSYS's payments magazine. So I wrote something. Here's your starter for ten:
To commemorate the past 10 years of ngenuity, we wanted to look back at how the landscape changed from 2008 to today. For such an effort, we tapped Chris Skinner — author, blogger and independent commentator on the financial markets and fintech. He’s been voted one of the most influential people in banking, a leader in fintech, and is a regular commentator on BBC, CNBC and Bloomberg. And, more importantly, he’s known for having his pulse on the global payments landscape and working with some of the biggest names in fintech.
So what’s in a decade? It's 521 weeks; 87,672 hours or 5.2 million minutes. That means a lot of opportunities for change — and, along the way, milestones that matter. Here are the most iconic moments from the last 10 years in payments.
01 The global financial crisis hits
One of the decade’s most stand-out moments took place on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008. On that day, thousands of payments professionals from banks and technology companies flew into Vienna to join the Swift International Banking Operations Seminar (SIBOS), a flagship annual banking and financial conference.
Many arrived that Sunday only to find message after message asking them to call back the office to discuss the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The next day most of the conference attendees turned right around and flew out of Vienna to return to their offices. By the end of that week, the banking system was changed forever.
Not only had Lehman failed, but Washington Mutual had been absorbed by JPMorgan Chase, the Royal Bank of Scotland collapsed, and many other banks struggled to stay afloat. The result has been a swathe of regulations that have tightened up the banking system and raised required capital levels to the highest ever. Equally, the result was a major tightening of loans and credit lines, with many credit cards moving into default. U.S. banks wrote off more than $100 billion in credit-card loans over the next two years after the crisis hit and, interestingly enough, credit card levels are back at pre-crisis highs today. Could there be another 2008 on the horizon?
If you want to know what the other nine things are, click here to find out.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
