Technology

Voice assistants are on a fast track, with ownership of home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home surging to between 20% and 25% of households from a mere 1% in about two years. The rapid growth is inviting keen interest in many circles about the potential for voice assistants to spark disruption in commerce, payments and financial services.

With the purchase of Finivation, the CUSO hopes to deliver better data integration to the credit union industry.

India’s Unified Payment Interface is a model that other developing economies can emulate, as they look to move away from cash-centricity and overhaul their own payments infrastructure in pursuit of speed, security, auditability and financial inclusion, writes Anoop Villait, managing director of corporate development at Transpay.

Mastercard and IBM have founded a company with a very narrow goal: to help organizations scramble their data to thwart hackers and comply with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation.

Resourceful crooks will relentlessly probe systems, processes and people until they find a weakness or an opportunity. That weakness is the magnetic strip that still exists on all EMV cards, according to Nathan Horn-Mitchem, senior vice president and chief information security officer at Provident Bank.

It remains to be seen whether Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony on Capitol Hill will prompt lawmakers to move forward on data privacy legislation. But it’s clear that the debate is just getting started — and that banks have a big stake.

U.K.-based companies WorldRemit and Lebara have formed a strategic partnership that will give Lebara’s 3 million mobile telecom customers direct access to WorldRemit’s digital money transfer service.

With consumer privacy issues in the spotlight, Citibank is betting its app — as an offering from a trusted data partner — will be more appealing than those from unknown brands or companies that have less liability if security breaches occur.

AccessFintech lets financial firms track trades and aggregates data in order to get a sense of risk across a number of systems.

AI in a car can be fatal. What could go wrong with AI in a bank? A new council established by BofA and Harvard hopes to minimize unintended consequences that could jeopardize consumers' financial well-being or discriminate against them.