Penny Crosman

The nation's largest bank has chosen Thought Machines' technology for its U.S. consumer bank.

Vendors including Akoya, Plaid and MX are trying to help banks manage and view their application programming interfaces through data portals as an alternative to scraping consumers’ login credentials.

Buying the point-of-sale loan provider would give Goldman Sachs access to a network of millions of consumers and thousands of merchants that the bank would have difficulty building on its own, said Stephanie Cohen, its global co-head of consumer and wealth management.

Canapi Ventures — created by former comptroller of the currency Gene Ludwig and banker Chip Mahan — and other venture capital firms say Peach Finance stood out because, unlike so many other startups, it's not focused on loan originations.

The neobank, which posted losses and burned through capital in its first year, has received a huge funding boost. That's raising questions about the depth of Varo's struggles and whether regulators and investors hold challenger banks and traditional banks to different standards.

The bank's technology team was trying to figure out how to develop a system similar to the respected software program of Brown Brothers Harriman's investor-services unit. Now that State Street is buying that same unit, it can drop the project.

The startup Digits has developed a search engine that combs the books of small companies to size up their finances. But to give clients a real-time snapshot, it seeks bank partners that will provide checking and credit card account information.

The North Carolina bank says the new system, which took one year to implement, will make it easier to compete with challenger banks and customize digital banking services for doctors' offices, dental practices and other small businesses.