Bank technology

WASHINGTON — Ripple Labs obtained a virtual currency license from the New York State Department of Financial Services on Monday, making it the fourth company with a BitLicense.

Visa's Digital Commerce App is allowing banks to develop their own mobile wallets. Many of its clients are larger community banks that may not otherwise have the resources to develop such a product internally.

Nonbanks now set the digital banking experience bar, but in less than a decade large banks will have swallowed them up and will have become digital financial superstores.

A vendor-created messaging network has attracted hundreds of community banks, many of which have decided it is easier to stop financial crime as a group.

Fintech companies are asking a federal regulator to create a specialized charter that would allow them to comply with federal rules instead of facing a state-by-state licensing framework.

Umpqua Holdings in Portland, Ore., has found a bank partner to join in its bid to bring new banking technologies to market.

The Bank of England is among the central banks exploring possible uses of blockchain technology. In a recent speech, a BOE official noted how it would open access to central banks beyond commercial banks. "Everyone – including individuals – would be able to hold such balances," he said.

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Many financial criminals are switching to a more sophisticated kind of identity theft in which they open accounts based on stolen identities, or on composites of information stolen from different people.

Regulators need to start paying attention to "denial-of-system" attacks as one of the triggers that could bring down a systemically important institution.