The 100 new enterprise apps the two companies are creating will target specific "pain points" for the industries.

IBM is creating new apps for banks their employees can use on iPhones and iPads. In doing so, Big Blue will help banks push legacy applications out to new devices, making many types of work possible on Apple devices.

More merchants are interested in accepting payments on tablets and phones, and they have many choices of providers. What are banks and vendors doing to set themselves apart?

Twenty years ago, the decentralized open architecture of the Internet was inspiring entrepreneurs worldwide to build products and services while skeptics rolled their eyes and wondered why anyone would want to use this slow, rudimentary, obscure technology. Jeremy Allaire, a veteran of the early Web days and now the CEO of startup Circle Internet Financial, sees parallels between that era and the current state of digital money.

Many banks' legacy systems were built decades ago and are maintained by folks nearing retirement. The challenge for CIOs is finding talented young recruits who are as well-versed in old technologies as they are new ones.

Banks that want to stay ahead of the digital curve should consider hub-and-spoke branch models, products that blend digital and physical services and innovation labs that allow creative thinkers to experiment — and even to fail.

Banks and others have been rolling out new technologies and updated features in recent weeks that are designed to improve customer satisfaction. Following are five ways banks are aiming to use software upgrades to delight customers in major and minor ways.

NCR has been working to become a "hardware-enabled, software-driven business" for eight years. With its purchase of online and mobile banking vendor Digital Insight and transaction switching and fraud detection software company Alaric Systems, it's taken a big step forward.

Vendors need to make their products easy to modernize and integrate, says Inder Koul, who runs IT at First Niagara.

Dollars in millions

Dollars in millions

Companies that made large jumps up or down in our rankings in 2012

As banks invest in newer digital channels, they need to focus on customer profitability.

New mobile apps let consumers handle personal financial management, pay bills, send money to friends and relatives, watch over their credit, and even fund a small business.

Doing payments well is really hard, as payments "disruptors" are finding out.

Some of the best uses for analytics in banking today include rewards programs, customer intelligence and risk management.

The challenges banks face remain largely the same, but the solutions with which they take them on have evolved.

How this year's FinTech 100 and Enterprise 25 rankings were calculated.

Common wisdom suggests small, nimble startups have an advantage over larger, clumsier organizations. But in financial technology, this tends to not be the case.

New approaches to security and customer interaction technology dominate BTN editors' picks for this year's Top 10 FinTech Companies to Watch.