Investment

The stratospheric rise of bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and other cryptocurrencies in recent months may be only the beginning.

Startups that have developed the technology for real estate finance are starting to conduct a broader array of transactions, including property sales.

Cybersecurity systems, as sophisticated as they are, are clearly not doing the job. And maybe they never will, given that in the end the effectiveness of those systems can be overridden by workers inside the organization, writes Tal Vegvizer, director of research and development for Bufferzone.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau featured in three of our most read articles of last year, while two others were about the disruptor Ripple. Other highlights included our annual Women in Banking package, the aftermath of the Equifax data breach and news of Amazon's possible banking plans.

Startups that have developed the technology for real estate finance are starting to conduct a broader array of transactions, including property sales.

Compliance checks today are not continuous or automatic, even in the largest of global enterprises. Traditionally, compliance audits are performed by organizations just once a year when, in reality, they need to be continuous in order to be effective, writes Manoj Asnani, lead of product and design for Balbix.

After 10 years of development, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain that has been widely adopted.

The recent explosion of activity around biometrics and other new forms of authentication should seem like a good thing for the development of connected commerce. But right now it's more of a wild west that needs to be tamed.

Banks' embrace of open-source development could eventually go beyond creating tools and apps — to something far more radical.

With so much uncertainty, the only thing that's clear is how different the sector may look a year from now. Here's an overview of the leading trends in technology that will impact payments and banking in 2018.