Research briefs · Topic hub
Finance & Payments
Source-backed analysis of banking infrastructure, payments, insurance technology, household economics, and consumer finance.
Market reports
- B2B Cross-Border Payments: Where Friction Persists — How correspondent banking, compliance, foreign exchange, and limited operating windows shape international business payments.
Editorial briefs
- Household Debt Is Not a Spending Forecast — Debt balances, delinquencies, and credit access illuminate consumer strain but do not mechanically predict retail demand.
- BNPL Needs a Total-Obligation View — Installment checkout can look small transaction by transaction while household exposure spans providers and payment dates.
- Spending Growth Can Hide a Household Trade-off — Personal consumption, disposable income, and saving belong in the same demand narrative.
- FedNow makes liquidity a continuous product concern — Instant settlement changes treasury and support operations even when the interface resembles ordinary payments.
- Open banking needs revocation users can trust — Consumer-authorized data access becomes a lifecycle obligation, not a one-time consent screen.
- ISO 20022 shifts the bottleneck to data quality — Richer Fedwire messages help only when upstream systems capture structured payment context accurately.
- Payment-page scripts are now an owned inventory — E-commerce security requires merchants to know which browser scripts can influence payment pages and why.
- Pass-through insurance depends on record linkage — A fintech balance display is not enough; ownership and account records must support claimed insurance treatment.
- Bank vendor exits need product-level planning — Third-party risk guidance turns portability, transition support, and data access into pre-contract design questions.
- Insurance AI governance starts with decision inventory — Insurers cannot govern automated decisions without knowing where models and data influence consumers.
- Insurance cyber notification needs a data map — Incident response depends on quickly linking affected systems, consumers, licensees, vendors, and regulators.