This month, we're talking AI costs, conference takeaways from Lake Tahoe to Las Vegas, and how DCI's CEO went from bank teller to the corner office.
It's been a busy July for banking and payments, AI costs are climbing, and inflation tied to the Iran war is putting real pressure on net interest margins. Here's what community bankers, bankers banks, and corporate credit unions need to know this month, plus the Acceleron team travels to Aptys Connect and DCI Fintech Forum.
Acceleron was on the ground at this year's Aptys Connect, trading notes with bankers who are deep into international payments strategy, including John Turner of Midwest Independent BankersBank and Alan E. McLean of United Bankers' Bank.
During the future-of-payments panel, CEO Damon Magnuski sat down with Aptys EVP Eric Dotson to talk about a revenue gap most community banks and credit unions don't even realize they're leaving on the table. Every USD wire a client sends internationally is a missed FX conversion, and that spread just walks out the door to a foreign bank instead of staying home. Acceleron's new integration inside Aptys Solutions PayLOGICS and existing integration with Fiserv Payments Exchange is built to fix exactly that, giving banks a way to bring FX in-house without hiring a single new person. If you're curious what that could mean for your non-interest income, reach out to us.
Read more about ways to earn non-interest income by automating international wires:
Acceleron at DCI's Fintech Forum: Las Vegas
Acceleron COO Elizabeth Downey attended DCI's Fintech Forum in Las Vegas, connecting with execs from FIS and Bankers Helping Bankers, and community bankers throughout the event.
Leadership Profile: DCI CEO Sarah Fankhauser
Our friends at DCI are on a roll! We talked with DCI CEO Sarah Fankhauser's about her career path from part-time bank teller to chief executive. In this month's featured Transformers profile, Fankhauser discusses how DCI approaches AI adoption with defined guardrails, and why she considers curiosity, not certainty, the most valuable trait in banking technology leadership today.
AI is getting more expensive, and one lawmaker is warning it could compress a bank run from hours down to seconds. That's just one thread this month, alongside FDIC insurance changes, ongoing M&A activity, movement on digital assets, inflation squeezing net interest margins, and cannabis banking reform.
Our development team has been onboarding and testing additional FX providers while kicking off implementation of NudgeConvert, our currency conversion engine, with a bankers bank client. Technical Operations Specialist Fernanda Girelli walks through it in this month's product video.
We're now SOC 2 certified, which means one more reason for community banks and credit unions moving money across borders to trust the rails. Same wire transactions, now backed by controls that meet the industry's highest bar for security and confidentiality.
AI pricing has quietly shifted from all-you-can-eat subscriptions to pay-per-token, and now that agentic AI is out here completing tasks on its own, some employees are running up token bills bigger than their salaries. PNC's CEO put it bluntly: productivity gains from AI can get wiped out fast by what it costs to run. The fix banks are landing on? Rightsizing the model to the task, using something smaller and cheaper for routine work instead of defaulting to the priciest option on the shelf. Because nobody needs a Ferrari to grab snacks from the corner store.
The takeaway: use the right tool for the right problem.
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Acceleron builds patented software that allows community banks and credit unions to conduct international payment transactions profitably through a foreign exchange (FX) marketplace. Serving over 200 financial institutions and orchestrating more than $1 billion in international payments annually, Acceleron helps small banks generate non-interest income through automation and compete more effectively with high-fee big banks.
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💬 Chat with us Have questions about streamlining international wire processes? Let’s talk! Speak with one of our FX experts to discover how new technology can help boost your non-interest income. We’re just a click away: reach out here.
Warm regards, The Acceleron Team
Note: This newsletter is intended for general informational and educational purposes only and does not provide financial services advice. It should not be considered a substitute for professional guidance.
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