Bank technology

There may be bumps along the way, but PayPal, Mastercard and Visa all share the same goal, according to Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga.

New capabilities announced Wednesday by Capital One run on Amazon.com's cloud. It's the latest sign banks are growing more comfortable using other companies' servers instead of their own closely guarded data centers — and that longstanding security concerns are fading.

Banks can borrow some of the best practices from mobile-first fintech firms in order to compete with startups for millennials.

The cybersecurity climate is already an all-hands-on-deck situation, so one more threat – even one prompted by one of America's loudest voices – may not matter.

Hedgeable sees the peer-to-peer business and personal loans as an alternative to fixed-income investments that are traditionally offered through exchange-traded funds.

"Nobody really paid attention" when the technology for algorithmic portfolio management and investment advice was developed five years ago, says Gauthier Vincent of Deloitte. But now that robo startups are all the rage, retail banks want in.

Nearly all publicly traded equities and a majority of bonds are owned not by the investors themselves but by a little-known entity called Cede & Co. This attenuation of property rights creates systemic risk, but an effort is underway to transform the system.

One of the ostensible selling points of blockchain technology is its potential to bring greater transparency to financial markets. But this feature has turned out to be a bug for the institutions that would use the technology.

Despite the hurdles facing technology giants in offering payments services, they remain keenly interested in the sector and more traditional service providers should stay on alert.

Large incumbents can effectively pursue and cultivate disruptive innovation without buying a disruptor. Here's how.