Is US Bank the only financial institution in the nation to continue increasing its investment in innovation? It sure seems like it.

The latest shot across the financial sector’s bow came yesterday, when bank officials disclosed that they were not just keeping the bank’s innovation budget constant, but actively looking to use retained earnings to make “small acquisitions.”

[O]ur payments business particularly mobile, we’re spending a lot of time and energy and money getting sure that we have the best ideas, the next new emerging protocol for customers, and we’re not cutting back on those investments in this case, because we think it’s going to be important to stay true to that. So, the retained earnings we’ll use for ourselves as well small acquisitions.

We believe this is the first time USB has specifically and publicly indicated that it was seeking out innovation acquisition, although we know it has been on the bank’s agenda for some time.

Richard Davis, the chief executive of US Bank, further emphasized that mobile payments and mobile banking are driving the bank’s overall R&D spend today — which is still not the case at many other banks. As he was discussing the bank’s credit card product development yesterday during the bank’s earnings call, he circled back to mobile:

But to say, that we’re spending time and energy on credit card is an understatement for me to go back and repeat as part of our R&D cost have been protected under the area of cards-not-present, which will be mobile banking and mobile payments; we’re seeing a lot of energy there, too. So, I would expect that to exceed most of our peers going forward in the area we’re spending doing lot of money to make sure we stay ahead of the game.

Davis is delivering a clear message that US Bank will not be beaten in innovation. And we believe him.