Banking Transformed with Jim Marous

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A bank or credit union product page that states who the account is for, what it costs and how to avoid the fee gives a customer, or an AI tool helping her, something to compare. Deloitte found that 58% of customers who use gen AI have already used it to research banking products.

Customers still trust their bank's own website more than any other source when they research a product, with 79% saying so in Deloitte's survey of almost 2,600 U.S. banking customers. At the same time, 58% of customers who use gen AI have used it to research banking products. A product page now serves a person and an AI tool at once, and many pages were written like the brochures that used to sit in every branch.

In this Banking Insights episode, Jim Marous follows a freelancer paid in lumps through two versions of the same checking account page. The generic page says flexible banking and low fees, so she cannot tell what the account costs or how to avoid the fee. The more useful page states the fee, how to waive it without a payroll direct deposit and how to reach a person, so she can compare the terms with her income.

The episode separates transparency, fit and proof, and explains why clearer copy can reveal an advantage but cannot create one. It lays out four checks for three product pages, looks at what a site that asks a few questions up front could do next, and ends with an exercise for leadership: each executive writes down who each product is for and why it fits, then the team compares the answers.

About: Banking Transformed is hosted by Jim Marous, top five banking industry influencer and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Banking Insights episodes deliver the most important strategic ideas in under ten minutes, for the executive who wants the takeaway without the deep dive. Subscribe to the Digital Banking Report at digitalbankingreport.com.

Dr. Lamont Black explains how stablecoins could cost banks and credit unions interchange, data and deposits.

This Flashback Friday revisits one of our most popular interviews, recorded in January 2026 with Dr. Lamont Black, a former Federal Reserve economist and finance professor at DePaul University.

Dr. Black placed the shift in 2027, once the GENIUS Act takes effect. Since then, the OCC finalized its stablecoin rule on October 21, 2026, and the Act takes effect January 18, 2027. Other regulatory work remains, but banks and credit unions now have a date to prepare for.

Dr. Black says interchange loss could reach 5, 10 or 20% in 2027, starting slowly and then building quickly like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. Merchants like Amazon could accept a stablecoin for about 1% when a card costs closer to 3%, and he suggests checking how much interchange your institution collects on Amazon Prime Day, which he calls material for many institutions. The risk extends to transaction data and to deposits, as customers sweep spending money from checking accounts into stablecoin balances.

He also discusses where to start. Dr. Black explains why a wallet that works with existing stablecoins like USDC is a better first experiment than issuing your own coin, which he does not necessarily recommend for most smaller institutions. He recommends education at the board and executive level, then an internal working group across payments, deposits and IT, and argues that small is nimble because you do not have to be big to play in this space.

Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

A Coinbase-commissioned study by The Block Research found that 7 of the 10 largest U.S. banks have tested stablecoins or tokenized deposits for settlement, and the other 3 have signaled plans to follow. The same study found that 73% of screened stablecoin transfer volume over a 12-month period took place outside U.S. banking hours. For a bank or credit union, those numbers raise a direct question about what stablecoin payments mean for deposits and interchange revenue, and how long an institution can wait.

Recorded at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, this conversation is with Pavel Kashuba, Strategic Leader at CoinsPaid Solutions, which runs the back office of stablecoin payments. Pavel explains that cross-border settlement, replacing correspondent banking, is the biggest use among financial institutions today, and why he believes they can do much more. He also describes how differing regulatory definitions across countries slow adoption, and why legacy operations hold progress back, which is why CoinsPaid invests in educating the people who work with the technology every day.

Pavel expects AI agents to partner with particular blockchains and to choose which blockchain and token a payment runs on. He says the biggest institutions already have strategic plans, with some hiring people and building software while others sit and wait, and he sees waiting as a strategy too. Jim compares the moment to instant payments, when a group of the largest banks in the country had nobody ready on day one, and asks what every bank or credit union should do today.

About Pavel Kashuba: Strategic Leader at CoinsPaid Solutions, which runs the back office of stablecoin payments.

Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.

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U.S. Bank gets customer improvements from idea to launch by tying the work to business priorities, bringing risk in early and setting success measures before work starts, and banks and credit unions of any size can copy the method.

Jim Marous is often asked which U.S. banking organization has the most impressive innovation culture, and he never hesitates to say U.S. Bank. Anyone who has changed banks knows the autopayments are what take the time. This Banking Insights episode looks at how U.S. Bank chooses which customer problems to solve and organizes itself to deliver. Two recent announcements, Protect 360 and Payment Switch, came 12 days apart, and Keynova and American Banker have recognized the results.

Drawing on his interviews with Dom Venturo, senior executive vice president and chief AI, data and innovation officer, and Don Relyea, Chief Innovation Officer, Jim explains the operating details. Work is tied to business priorities, risk partners get involved while ideas are still taking shape, success criteria are set before work starts, and a clear handoff moves a proven idea to the line of business that will own it. Dom says about 80% of what a new product needs can come from existing tools.

Jim also covers what a smaller bank or credit union can take from this. That includes questioning every step customers are asked to complete, putting providers and risk in the first meeting, learning what existing providers already support, and telling employees and customers when something launches. Jim also explains why the recognition U.S. Bank collects goes mostly to improvements customers can see and use, and how the bank tells people what it builds. The episode closes with one question every institution can use to find its next improvement.

About: Banking Transformed is hosted by Jim Marous, top five banking industry influencer and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Banking Insights episodes deliver the most important strategic ideas in under ten minutes, for the executive who wants the takeaway without the deep dive. Subscribe to the Digital Banking Report at digitalbankingreport.com.

Financial institutions should make it easy to do business with them their first priority. One community bank got account opening to 2 minutes and 13 seconds and increased conversion rates to almost 70%.

Derek Corcoran spent 25 years working on customer experience in financial services, including time as chief experience officer at Temenos. His new book, Designing for Need, argues that the industry copied its playbook from businesses selling things people enjoy. Banking is something people need to do, and the best version of a need-to-do experience gives the customer their time back. He makes the case with a community bank that opened accounts in 2 minutes and 13 seconds and a London branch where customers spent 55 minutes anyway.

Jim pushes back. He has spent years arguing that customers want us to know them, understand them and help improve their financial wellness, which sounds like the opposite of an institution designing itself to disappear. Derek's answer is the notice that arrives before an overdraft and the sweep from savings that quietly prevents it, an institution responding to what is happening in the customer's life in real time. They also talk about embedded banking, and why Derek treats AI as a tool that follows strategy.

Derek says banks under $10 billion held about 15% of industry assets and distributed 45% of PPP funds, and that friends of his who moved to a community bank were back at a national bank within a year. They get into intentional friction, with a customer who said a $600,000 mortgage should feel serious, the question of when you last opened an account at your own institution, and the marketing promise Bankwest and DBS make that Derek can't find an American institution making.

Hosted by Jim Marous. Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes multiple times each week.