While everyone's been obsessing over retail banking disruption, something fascinating is happening in commercial banking.
Here's the plot twist nobody's talking about: The biggest threat to commercial banking relationships isn't coming from traditional competitors or even fintechs. It's coming from platforms that are already embedded in your customers' daily business operations.
Today's rapidly evolving commercial banking landscape includes not only big banks with big tech budgets, but innovative new entrants, such as Amex, Square, Mercury, Brex, Ramp, and others. Commercial banking leaders must reimagine digital strategies to meet increasingly sophisticated customer expectations.
Think about it: these asymmetric competitors aren't winning because they're better at banking—they're winning because they're solving real business problems while banks are still perfecting their digital document upload experience.
Fifteen years ago Square probably didn't seem like much of a bank competitor. The only thing they offered was a small dongle that plugged into a headphone jack to accept credit card swipe payments. They aren't just the processor of choice for bars, food trucks, and craft fair artisans anymore. They have been relentlessly developing and acquiring additional capabilities to become an operating system for small business banking.
They are coming for your bread-and-butter commercial businesses of all stripes. And they're not alone.
The biggest industry disconnect: We keep building "better banking experiences" while our customers are looking for better business experiences. Maybe the future of commercial banking isn't in banking at all—it's in making business itself better.