PayThink

Financial institutions can improve monitoring of suspicious activity and potentially risky customers using algorithms, but they need to treat this new technology with caution.

Institutions that have been opening consumer accounts without consent need to prepare for the fallout, even if the OCC has said it won't name names.

Only the collective efforts of cardholders, issuers, merchants and acquirers will significantly impact payment fraud, writes Stephanie Ericksen, vice president of identity and risk products for Visa.

It's tough to explain the bizarre way the CFPB handled the decision to dismiss the members of three advisory councils earlier this week.

Paring down branches, product offerings and business lines can help banks succeed.

The Patriot Act, for example, requires all U.S. businesses to comply with regulations issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Those that fail to comply, knowingly or inadvertently, are susceptible to significant fines and even legal action, writes Peter Shore, general manager of Transpay.

As customers increasingly research products online, they are coming to know more about a bank’s products than workers. This is a problem.

There is a growing fraud problem encompassing much more than the direct value of lost merchandise. There is also manual order review, opportunity costs from false positives and the massive overhead of implementing fraud-fighting best practices, writes Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt.

The agency has no plans to release general findings from an extensive review of sales practices at large and midsized banks. That's troublesome, and will only fuel the perception that it is too cozy with the institutions it regulates.

Innovations such as automated smart safes can make it easier to track the flow of paper money, reducing theft risk, and cut down on the number of armored truck pickups, according to Sam Bosch, president and CEO of Peregrin Financial Technologies.