Nacha recap: What’s to come in three key verticals

The theme of Nacha’s annual Smarter Faster Payments Conference this year was 'Disruptive Ideas Empower Solutions'. That’s exactly what members of the Transactis, a Mastercard company team discussed during three conference sessions on the evolution and transformation of payments technology.

Read on for a recap of the takeaways for each session.

Conversational payments: How we got here, where we’re going and are we ready?

Since their introduction a few years ago, virtual assistants – like Siri and Alexa – have only grown in popularity. During this session, Bill Morrison, vice president for product management at Transactis, offered his insights on the direction conversational payments are headed.

While artificial intelligence (AI) technology can still be considered in the infancy stage, it has made great progress since 2016. One of the greatest leaps so far being the ability for AI to understand context and anticipate the user’s needs.

Despite the progress, it’s not full steam ahead in the conversational payments space. Important considerations when it comes to data privacy and security concerns are top-of-mind for AI technology providers and consumers alike. Some of the key takeaways from the session were that adoption among consumers, increased sophistication of biometrics, addressing security and privacy concerns, and an increase in the interoperability of systems are paramount to the success of conversational payments.

Facing the digital transformation in community banking

The acceleration of digital transformation and consumer expectations in the bill payment space has never been more prevalent for community banks and credit unions (community institutions) than it is right now. Session presenters discussed the impacts and important considerations that must be addressed when developing new digital strategies for their accounts receivables operations.

When Roy Spinelli, vice president for business development was asked about the response to the opportunity, he highlighted several key areas around accounts receivables but one of the most important was around member retention and customer acquisition. “A high quality, seamless digital experience is essential to retaining and growing member relationships.”

The biggest takeaway from the session for community institutions and technology providers they work with is that the time for digital, disruptive solutions is here and if they want to keep pace with larger financial institutions in the space, they need to make implementing a digital strategy a top priority.

We fought the fraud, now what? Examining the future of ACH account validation technologies

As faster payment rails — like Nacha’s Same Day ACH and The Clearing House’s RTP Network® — push the pace of the digital economy, the need for faster protections like ACH Account Validation (AAV) grows.

Panelists including Morrison focused on the applications of technologies used to leverage AAV data, going beyond fraud prevention and detailed the considerations for the ethical use of said data.

Beginning in March 2022, enforcement of the Nacha Account Validation Rule becomes a reality. Within the biller direct space, it’s vital for corporates that present e-bills and collect payments to get something that’s API-enabled and available in real-time, plugging it into a biller direct experience.

When it comes to the question around ethical implications of the collection of data related to AAV, all speakers agreed that it’s important to know if any of the participants are involved in any high-risk businesses. AAV is meant to be a data validation service, not an additional data provider, and compliance in any applicable rules and regulations is tantamount to maintaining trust in an AAV service.