As the need for easy-yet-secure mobile banking authentication escalates and consumers become used to logging in by looking into a camera, banks are taking the technology more seriously.

Banks talk a good game about thwarting fraud and protecting consumers and businesses, but the experiences of this author, a former bank regulator, illustrate how the quality of such efforts varies dramatically from one bank to the next.

The company angered hundreds of customers when its software flagged their accounts as suspicious and suddenly cut them off, according to a ProPublica report. The episode illustrates the challenge shared by fintechs and banks of rooting out scammers without being overzealous.

Europe has encouraged adoption with rules that put consumers in control of the way their data is shared among banks, fintechs and third-party vendors. Whether the U.S. can make similar progress without its own rules is unclear.

Six online lenders and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition have asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for clarity on whether disparate-impact rules apply to lending decisions made by machines.

The digital-only bank has adopted machine learning to process loans faster, more accurately and with better fraud detection than in the past.