Investment

Super Bowl ads' impact, another overdraft-fees ouster, and more in banking news this week.

Thomas Vartanian, a banking lawyer and former federal regulator, has co-founded the Financial Technology & Cybersecurity Center to address a fundamental question: Is the internet the right tool for the job of modern banking?

Banks and companies that use artificial intelligence to make loans agree with regulators that it should be tested for fairness. But they also say traditional loans could be just as biased.

Mobile payments got an early start in parts of Africa more than a decade ago, but the continent's overall banking infrastructure lags far behind, creating a void for companies like AZA and WorldRemit to fill.

Starling Bank Ltd. is weighing plans for a fresh funding round that could value the U.K. challenger at around 2.5 billion pounds ($3.4 billion), according to people familiar with the matter.

Taavet Hinrikus turned his startup into the one of the world’s biggest digital-payment firms, giving returns of about 35,000% to early investors including Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures.

European regulators are telling the region’s banks to keep a close eye on potential hacking attacks as tensions with Russia rise over Ukraine.

The U.K. financial technology startup GoCardless raised $312 million in new funding to speed up its expansion in open banking across products and geogrophies.

The new group will provide technical assistance for cloud clients’ blockchain-based platforms.

Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has cautioned banks, credit unions and fintechs about fair-lending violations that may stem from reliance on artificial intelligence. His comments threaten to discourage financial firms from using the technology to crunch nontraditional data about borrowers, experts say.