The paper is motivated by the growth of the electronic payments system and its relevance in enhancing the banking industry's earnings. Consequently, the paper examines the causal relationship between the electronic payments system and the banking industry's returns in Nigeria. The paper offers some important contributions to the literature involving the use of an approach that allows for data-driven identification of the change points in the electronic payments system and the banking industry's returns nexus. The paper discovered three important findings. First, the causal relationship between the electronic payments system and the banking industry's returns in Nigeria changes with time changes. Second, there is evidence of causality between the electronic payments system and returns on assets and equity, however, the causality was more evident under the recursive window. Third, the causal relationship was more evident in some specific periods such as 2020Q4, all quarters of 2015 to 2016, and 2020 to the end of 2023. The paper recommends that policymakers should revisit and reinvigorate the specific cashless policies instituted in 2012-2016 that aided higher returns to the banking industry. Similarly, the Central Bank of Nigeria and other banking industry players should intensify efforts to encourage the use of electronic payments due to their usefulness and ability to enhance the banking industry's earnings.

Current societal challenges related to retirement planning, healthcare systems’ evolution and environmental changes require households to pay a closer attention to their personal finances. This in turns calls for the associated industry to transform and scale. To do so, the personal finance industry could potentially leverage artificial intelligence tools for which there has been increasing levels of chatter. However, there is, to my knowledge, little consensus on whether or not those tools are appropriate given the challenges ahead. The literature review at the heart of this article first suggests that the stream of personal finance where transformation is more than needed is the one pertaining to investments, rather than the ones associated to loans, insurances or payments. Second, the productivity levers fueling the transformation of this branch are yet more driven, as of today, by simple digitalization notions rather by the usage of A.I. instruments. Over the next couple of years, more attention should thus be paid to use/business cases associated to investment products and the digitalization of their distribution chain.