John Adams

Wells Fargo has launched a collaborative online community for college planning aimed at students, parents, guidance counselors and financial advisors.

Attaching readers to smartphones is an emerging way for merchant acquiring banks to extend digital payments to businesses. Before the market takes off, PCI plans to weigh in on the new technology to ensure solutions pass encryption vetting.

Banks want to use more data, particularly social media and other behavioral data, as part of risk and marketing. But that requires an upgrade of scoring systems, traditionally a time-consuming process with a large learning curve. Tech providers are competing with new systems that speed these development cycles and migrate more data crunching power to the user level.

Finding a branch through augmented reality isn't going to solve world peace, but does fill a customer need. Vice president of ebusiness and payments Tom Trebilcock explains how gaming and the "buzz" surrounding augmented reality can help position PNC as a tech-savvy bank in the eyes of consumers.

In a buyer's market, the smallest of processing hiccups can cause a lender to lose a potential borrower, which is why companies such as American Pacific Mortgage place a premium on developing new digital delivery strategies.

Business clients that receive thousands of checks per month typically can't get automated bulk check processing services from a small bank. And if the services matter to those clients, the small banks lose their business to larger rivals.

Citigroup is once again showing its willingness to venture outside of traditional banking to build a social media strategy, as it has in both its talent acquisition and content.

Mortgage pipelines are like cholesterol — they have good and bad versions. Bank of America is trying to unclog its buildup of distressed mortgages (the bad version) by using a new Web portal it developed with Equator.

As volumes and types of payments increase — particularly mobile payments using the ACH rails — securing ACH transactions becomes more complex and prone to crimes such as account takeover. Fiserv, Fundtech, and partners Jack Henry and ACH Alert are weighing in with different forms of layered verification.

The firm's new incubator and accelerator program aids in the development and fast delivery of new ideas to the market.

It's embedding imperceptible digital watermarks in reports that can be scanned to open videos and more.

Easier login and integration of a Bill.com cash management dashboard with online banking is designed to lighten the online cash management learning curve for businesses that may be on the fence.

From social media analytics to cloud computing to context-aware computing to novel means of building applications, this year's financial services innovators trying out new ideas.

Banks are finding that payments technology is the best way to reach small business clients, a segment that traditionally has been undersaved.

Banks want to avoid the cost and time needed for full core replacements. But new products like mobile beckon, leading to some creative solutions toward the challenge of modernization.

Dean Ilijasic weighs the content and timing of new mobile and tablet apps as the bank tries to tap small business and mass affluent consumers.

Chirpify, which allows PayPal transfers via Twitter and counts a hip hop record label among its clients, is attracting tech investors and touting a social media-friendly payments model that's showing promise.

The alternative lender's new decisioning engine runs multiple models to bring its short-term loans to a larger market. It's also planning to operate in more states, a tough task for online lenders looking to navigate varied state laws.

IT exec Saul van Beurden discusses how the bank is adhering to emerging service oriented architecture standards, a move it hopes will also help it deploy new products quickly.

The tech firm's personal financial management tools and Central 1's digital banking products will be made available to more than 300 financial services providers in Canada.