Amazon

U.S. Bank, Bank of America and other firms are looking toward the day when the ultimate virtual assistant arrives, one capable of being personalized and working on any device.

The access Alexa gets by being built into users' home speakers and tablets is a delicate trust; if Amazon oversteps its boundaries, it might find Alexa gets muted or locked down.

Banks still have advantages in the battle against big tech firms like Amazon and Facebook, but they will need to capitalize on those to survive.

From the identity of bankers in the 21st century to the regulatory turmoil in Washington to the huge impact of technology on the industry, readers expressed an array of strong opinions about what happened in 2017.

Companies like Target and Barnes & Noble are already making moves to streamline payments and connections with consumers, writes Robert Glazer, founder and managing director of Acceleration Partners.

Consumers’ desire to shop online is creating huge demand for distribution centers and forcing property owners to think creatively about redeveloping vacant retail space. Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent rebuilding areas hard hit by hurricanes and wildfires.

Amazon dominates during the holiday shopping season because Prime offers customers benefits every day, writes Tom Caporaso, CEO of Clarus Commerce.

Analytics can customize experience for consumers and allow consumers to customize the experience for themselves, writes Matt Wilcox, senior vice president of marketing, strategy and innovation for digital banking at Fiserv.

Amazon reported that the Amazon Echo Dot was the best-selling item on Amazon on Black Friday, meaning millions of households are likely to be setting up their new Echo on Christmas morning, writes Scott Hess, vice president of user experience, consulting and innovation at Fiserv.

Jon Stein plans to make Betterment's robo-adviser as personalized and intelligent as the online retailer's recommendation engine.

We entrust tech firms with vast amounts of information about our daily lives, with an expectation that they will safeguard it. But have we become too casual in the trust we place with them in exchange for more personalized experience and convenience?

As the reigning technology giants demand consumers do everything through voice-controlled smart speakers, they may inadvertently succeed where smartphone-based wallets stalled.

Readers react to the change in tone at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the launch of voice-command banking on Amazon’s Alexa, how regulation affects financial innovation and more.

We entrust tech firms with vast amounts of information about our daily lives, with an expectation that they will safeguard it. But have we become too casual in the trust we place with them in exchange for more personalized experience and convenience?

Establishing trust, especially when it comes to online payments, is critical. People need to feel secure and confident that their personal boundaries won’t be crossed or their information misused, writes Rik van't Hof, director of product management front-end for Ingenico e-commerce.

With millions of Alexa and Google Home devices now in use, first-mover banks are rapidly developing services to let customers control their finances using only their voice — even if there are still many kinks to work out.

If CVS acts quickly and truly pushes synergies between its retail and insurance businesses, there is time for the company to establish a unique value proposition in reshaping the pharmacy experience.

In a world where consumers are tuning out TV ads easier than ever before with streaming services like Netflix, the e-commerce giant is giving advertisers a new platform to be in front of millions of people who like to shop, writes Tom Caporaso, CEO of Clarus Commerce.

Voice-based payments are part of the "instant gratification" consumers will expect from payment and financial services companies, writes Hicham Tahiri, a Paris-based fintech entrepreneur.

Merchants’ fates are inextricably linked to what customers want. So, as they continue to embrace frictionless experiences, merchants are under mounting pressure to deliver or risk losing out, writes Joseph Daly, COO of North American Payment Processing for Paysafe.