Technology

Banks are warming to behavioral biometric software as one of an array of choices to prevent digital banking fraud.

While around 70% of U.S. merchant locations still aren’t ready to handle EMV card transactions, Atlanta-based merchant acquirer Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bank, can tell the opposite story: 70% of its merchant clients will be EMV-enabled by the end of this year.

Forget about municipal governments. Through transactions such as payments, banks have a trove of data that can be used to revolutionize how cities work.

Mastercard will launch its “selfie pay” system in the Asia-Pacific region next year, expanding the global reach of its biometric identity-verification service for online payments to more markets as part of a gradual worldwide rollout.

Typically merchants post signs at EMV terminals to tell their customers how they work, or that they should keep swiping. Starbucks is taking a more forward-thinking approach by treating EMV frustration as a mobile marketing opportunity.

Behavioral biometrics has already stopped several million dollars worth of online banking fraud at National Westminster Bank in London.

India's abrupt recall of its larger bills — a bid to crack down on tax evasion — was a crash course in how to adapt to a cash shortage. Was this an opportunity for mobile payments or a failing of the overall financial services system?

Wells Fargo & Co. said retail customers opened 44 percent fewer new accounts in October compared with the same period a year earlier following the bank’s record-setting settlement with regulators over its cross-selling scandal.

Mastercard has launched its quick-response mobile payments system in India through its Masterpass mobile wallet, designed to help mobile banking users complete purchases through their mobile phones at the physical point of sale.

Major wholesalers at Delhi’s largest fruit and vegetable market, which serves most of the capital’s nearly 17 million people, are planning to sell their products at bargain prices in order to move perishable stock as the impact of India’s cash shortages continues to bite.