Money2020 Attendees Share Insights and Takeaways at Bank of America Twitter Chat

On Wednesday, October 9 from 7:30 - 8:30 am, Bank of America hosted a twitter chat at Money2020. 

The live chat was designed to look back at the first few days of the conference, discussing important themes and takeaways, memorable moments, and issues facing the payments industry – essentially an opportunity to connect the dots.

The chat was aimed at conference attendees and people who weren’t able to attend, and was designed to focus on thought leadership around payments. Unlike most chats, this event had a live audience who participated on site along with others who participated in absentia. On the live panel moderated by Peter Osborne were Farhan Siddiqi from Bank of America, Cherian Abraham from Experian, David Birch from Consult Hyperion, consultant Tom Noyes, Elizabeth Dias from Perficient, Jim Issokson from MasterCard and myself (remotely).

The following transcript captures comments made during the Bank of America Money2020 Twitter chat. This transcript was edited to keep the answers to questions together. Retweets were also deleted that did not include additional content to shorten the transcript and show the flow of conversation. 

Metrics for the twitter chat were as follows: 

• Total Participants: 187 
• Total Number of Tweets: 711 
• Total Reach: 574,623 
• Total Impressions: 6,787,715 
• Total Number of Retweets: 318 

Bank of America @BofA_News: Welcome to the Future of Payments Innovation chat, live from #Money2020 in Las Vegas. #BofA_News is pleased to host this opportunity to connect the dots from the #Money2020 conference. My name is @peter_osborne and I’m a communications executive for #BofA. I’m joined by @FarhanSiddiqi, #BofA Strategic Planning Executive for Digital Banking.

Q1: What speakers or topics have most resonated so far at Money2020

Jim Marous @JimMarous: A1: Highlight - #Amazon #PayPal #Citi #AmEx #Discover #MasterCard rocked! Showed that payments innovation never sleeps. #Money2020

Elizabeth Dias @techmktggirl: A1: Standout #Money2020 Speakers: @thefriley of @Square & @PayPal. Topics: #TomorrowsBank, Consumerization of Data & Retail 3.0

Kevin Boglarsky @kmbx2ind: #money2020A1. The keynotes even if they went a bit long.

Thomas Noyes @noyesclt: A1: I thought amazon MCX and Amex did a fantastic job.

Bank Innovation @BankInnovation: I enjoyed the bullishness on Bitcoin and loved the Square and Amex keynotes. - Phil Ryan, Bank Innovation #money2020

Aaron McPherson @aaronmcpherson: A1: Tokens are BIG #money2020

Jim Marous @JimMarous: A1: Loved the tweets Monday "#Bitcoin will do to money, what the internet did for information" #Money2020

Bank of America @BofA_News: A1: Sarah Friar was impressive explaining Square’s lofty mission and its simple approach – Start-Run-Grow. ^fs #money2020

Dave Birch @dgwbirch: #money2020 A1: liked the Amex stuff about the unbanked, the Zapp direct to bank account retail proposition, new PayPal stuff

Money2020 Hump Day Tweet Highlights

Wednesday at Money2020 started very strong with an early morning tweet chat hosted by Bank of America and attended by over 200 fintech followers in a live chat room and digitally.

Participants provided feedback on the topics they enjoyed the most, the biggest takeaway, what the future shopper would look like and what it will take to make mobile payments mainstream. Despite the early hour, the twitter volume hit event highs based on tracking shown below.

Despite many people heading back home, the momentum for the day didn't stop, with keynotes from Facebook, Bank of America and First Data being a bridge to excellent 'Launchpad' sessions where new products were introduced each day in 6 minute intervals similar to Finovate.

Highlights of tweets made up until the lunch are provided below.

#Money2020 Banks & Google are positioned in a way to capture a lot of customer context and can deliver value if & when they make useof it.
— Cherian Abraham (@cherian_abraham) October 9, 2013

@noyesclt makes the point: even with strong product, persuading consumers to change behavior is hard and slow. #money2020
— John Muller (@jmuller) October 9, 2013

Tweet Recap of Mon/Tues - Mon: http://t.co/ll2PP0Wvai Tues AM: http://t.co/55lE6uWhVn Tues PM: http://t.co/LNwvynrB8x #Money2020
— Jim Marous (@JimMarous) October 9, 2013

Watching Deborah Liu of #Facebook payments. How far will she go in exposing their goals of being the ID engine for alt payments? #money2020
— Scott Dueweke (@Scott_Dueweke) October 9, 2013

The @facebook ecosystem supports 55 currencies, 80 pmt methods and over 1MM pmts daily. Heck yes, they're a player in payments! #money2020
— Suzanne LaProva (@SuzanneLaProva) October 9, 2013

Bank of America Should Become a Credit Union

I have decided that the best course of action for Bank of America may be to become a credit union. Despite the regulatory hurdles and government scrutiny that the bank would need to deal with, it may be an easier course of action than trying to catch a break with our industry's trade press, the general media and definitely those using social media to respond to every move the bank makes.

For instance, American Banker published a story last week from Ed Roberts entitled, Bank Transfer Day Spurs Big Membership Growth at CUs. The story cited that the credit union industry had near record growth in the second half of 2011 . . . 'after the ill-fated September announcement by Bank of America of monthly debit fees prompted Bank Transfer Day'. This growth of 850,000 members in the final six months of the year contributed to an annual growth for the credit union industry of almost 1.3 million new accounts, reported the NCUA.

According to my calculations, a growth of 850,000 new members for the second half of 2011 represents an average of fewer than one incremental new account per credit union (not per branch) a day. The statistics are roughly the same when you look at the annual growth rate as well. Assuming that the number of new members represented incremental growth, the 1.3 million new members reflect only a 1.4% growth over 2010 according to the 2010 Government Census. 

How does this become newsworthy? In almost all U.S. major newspapers, a version of this article ran including a reference to both Bank Transfer Day and Bank of America. The Los Angeles Times ran a headline, Banks' Fees Pay Off - For Credit Unions while Forbes ran an even more sensationalized headline, Credit Unions Membership Soars as Customers Spurn Big Banks. Does any other industry get as much press for close to flat line growth? Shouldn't this be more realistically considered business as usual?