Biometrics

The sheer volume of data that collected by Internet-connected "things" — cars, homes, wearable devices, and yes, refrigerators — could help deepen banks' relationships with customers. But it also adds more avenues for security breaches and raises privacy concerns.

Banks will likely take a wait-and-see approach before connecting their apps to Siri, Apple's talking digital assistant. Such conservatism poses risks as consumers increasingly demand the latest digital features.

By allowing commercial clients to authenticate via an eye scan, Wells Fargo is making a burdensome task simple. Secil Watson, head of wholesale Internet solutions, is pushing the bank to make digital banking easier for commercial clients.

The San Francisco bank isn't interested in making splashy investments in technology. At an investor day event Tuesday, Wells executives said they would focus on taking incremental steps to reduce costs and improve customer experiences.

Wells Fargo will soon roll out eyeprint verification for its commercial customers using its mobile banking platform.

BMO Financial Group is looking to bring a recent consumer-facing innovation to its corporate customers.

Biometrics are seen as the future of authentication, but some customers hesitate to ditch old ways. Picking the most practical pain points — like authenticating over the phone — is banks' best bet to win converts, observers say.

Authentication methods meant to keep cybercriminals from taking over accounts can also lock out legitimate users. This old dilemma is growing more vexing as cybercriminals get better at impersonating customers and as regulators increasingly push multifactor authentication.

Banks have a lot of work to do to modernize branches and keep their technology on par with other businesses' digital tools. Here are some ideas worth borrowing from retailers, restaurants and consumer electronics makers if banks haven't adopted them already, says appointment-software firm Financial Management Solutions.

Customer expectations for digital are a moving target, and banks and their vendors are quickly trying to figure out which products and services to add next.

To identify fintech startups deserving of special recognition this year as part of the FinTech Forward program, a team of American Banker editors, BAI staff and industry members debated the merits of self-nominees and companies we know.

First Internet Bank is pioneering eye-vein recognition to let customers log in to its mobile app, hoping consumers' distinct concerns about this form of biometric authentication fade away.

Fiserv has agreed to use Fujitsu's handprint-scanning system for fraud prevention in its account-processing product.

Some critics see banks' innovation labs as wasteful, unapplied research, but Wells Fargo has embraced the trend by establishing six such labs, a so-called accelerator program and now an innovation group. The bank's Steve Ellis explains its rationale.

Most banks that deploy voice authentication require a specific spoken passphrase. Eastern Bank customers can have a normal conversation with call center reps; software in the background compares their voice patterns to a recorded snippet.

Voice biometrics, fingerprint recognition, device ID and behavioral analytics are at long last becoming accurate and convenient enough for prime time.

Banks that use biometric technology should remember to take client and employee privacy concerns seriously. After all, banks have a duty to protect personal information and prevent its potential misuse.

Banks have been experimenting with biometrics for decades. (Most) recent initiatives show real promise for self-identification using physical characteristics.

Bankers, technology CEOs and President Obama are throwing everything they have at countering the growing threat of cyber attacks, putting their faith in biometrics, tokenization and data sharing. But it's far from clear that it will be enough.

Digital Insight, a company owned by NCR Corporation, has secured an agreement with EyeVerify Inc. to integrate the biometrics company's eye vein recognition technology, called Eyeprint ID, into its mobile banking platforms.