Authentication

Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook, is set to buy the assets of Jumio in bankruptcy proceedings of the startup focused on online identity verification.

In explaining the bank's commitment to the Chase Pay mobile wallet, an executive told investors in February that the mobile payment landscape was going to get more complicated before it gets simpler.

With tighter security in the online and mobile channels, fraudsters are turning their attention to vulnerable contact centers, conning eager-to-please phone service reps into coughing up customer information or letting them reset passwords on other people’s accounts.

The precedent set in the ongoing battle between Apple and the FBI over custom access to a device in question opens up unsettling risks on privacy and security.

Security veterans Frank Abagnale and Ori Eisen have teamed up on a heavy-duty authentication service with no pretensions of being easy to use. Their venture, Trusona, just raised $8 million.

Despite the rise of digital banking, most people still look to physical channels when opening accounts. That's partly due to consumer preference, but banks have a long way to go to make the digital sales experience smooth.

Orrstown Bank launched several innovative Web initiatives in 2015, including a SMS two-way texting platform and a Zillow-like feature that displays housing listings on its Web presence.

Bank of America announced Thursday that it customers can now suspend their debit cards temporarily; it is the first of several new features the bank has planned for 2016 after it tripled its digital banking budget.

Biometrics are seen as the future of authentication, but some customers hesitate to ditch old ways. Picking the most practical pain points — like authenticating over the phone — is banks' best bet to win converts, observers say.

Banks' core systems are like spaghetti — a mess of noodles. They need to find ways to be more structured,, says Hanspeter Wolf, CEO of onboarding software vendor Appway.

Authentication methods meant to keep cybercriminals from taking over accounts can also lock out legitimate users. This old dilemma is growing more vexing as cybercriminals get better at impersonating customers and as regulators increasingly push multifactor authentication.

Bank regulators will stiffen their requirements and identity theft will escalate, but banks will toughen up their defenses.

Relations between banks and providers of personal financial management tools have soured of late amid reports that some banks block PFM sites' access to their customers' information during peak traffic periods. Aggregators say they are working to address banks' concerns, but they also are urging banks to invest in more server capacity to keep pace with customer demand.

Moven will soon prompt its customers for usernames and passwords only for riskier transactions. By removing the login for most functions, the company aims to drive engagement in an app meant to be used on the go.

Ramamurthi has transformed a 123-year-old institution with one branch serving a dusty Kansas town into a seedbed for disruptive financial technology — not to mention a wildly profitable generator of fee income.

Under the direction of Richard Holbrook, Eastern Bank has prepared itself for the next 200 years by embracing a culture innovation, adding scale through acquisitions and advocating for the less fortunate in its community. It's an unusual formula, but it has worked and that's why he is one of American Banker's three Community Bankers of the Year for 2015.

Branches using technology to issue cards on the spot leads to increased card usage, so banks should aim to maintain instant issuing capability with the EMV conversion.

The debate over whether signatures or PINs are a stronger security feature overlooks the fact that neither is the most important defense against fraud.

With the outlook for mobile payments improving, American Express has brought together several initiatives in this area under a new umbrella dubbed Amex Enabled Digital Solution.

Forward-thinking companies could get a reputation lift from being first out of the gate with interesting apps. Banks could also be first to help protect customers from the inevitable privacy leaks that the IoT will make possible.