Bank technology

The 2016 Digital Bankers of the Year, selected by the tech journalists at American Banker, are helping their organizations redefine the customer experience as people rely more on their phones and less on face-to-face interactions to transact. Through their efforts, customers are getting into their accounts faster, sending money more easily and enjoying better digital experiences overall.

A recent spate of breaches on Asian banks that allowed hackers access to the Swift network have resulted in finger pointing, and some calls for creating a new, more secure network. But the issues faced by Swift would likely be the same with any replacement network.

Well before the mobile payments explosion, incumbents were already focused on how to respond to nonbanks "piggybacking" on banks' payments infrastructure. As the consultant behind a 1994 banking industry report on the threat put it, "there is no time for delay."

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and our social media platforms.

Consumers, especially millennials, increasingly prefer to do everything on their mobile devices, including signing up for services. But as banks start to open accounts for people whom their employees have never met, there are plenty of questions about whether they can tell real customers and crooks apart.

Investigators are examining possible computer breaches at as many as 12 banks linked to Swift's global payments network that have irregularities similar to those in the theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank.

In the ongoing melee between the two major players, strong authentication has been put on the backburner in favor of the respective economies of implementing chip card technology.

In the battle among banks to make use of blockchain, Banco Santander's U.K. unit said it's first among British lenders to use the technology for global payments.

Smartphones are an important window into understanding underbanked customers, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a report released Wednesday in conjunction with a meeting of the agency's advisory committee on economic inclusion.

Valley National Bank in Wayne, N.J., has appointed former PNC executive Robert Bardusch to be its chief information officer.

CIT Group has embraced a system that mimics a single source of data to help it comply with increased regulatory scrutiny. It could also help the company become more efficient.

A report by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors found that consolidated companies with money transmitter licenses fell more than 10% from 518 in the first quarter of 2015, to 456 this year.

TransferWise, the U.K. company that's trying to upend the world of international money transfers, raised an additional $26 million to fund expansion in Latin America and Asia.

When it comes to earning consumer loyalty with user-friendly mobile banking tools, everyday interactions can matter more than momentous ones.

The debate over speeding up payments transactions should consider the necessity of allowing consumers time to rethink and abort their purchases.

The San Francisco bank isn't interested in making splashy investments in technology. At an investor day event Tuesday, Wells executives said they would focus on taking incremental steps to reduce costs and improve customer experiences.

The wealth management technology provider SigFig has raised $40 million in equity and other financing from a number of large financial and venture capital firms so that it can expand its business.

Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, Calif., has launched a program that lets new customers sign up for accounts using electronic signatures.

Former regulators, data scientists and academics have come up with a way to turn financial contracts of almost all types into algorithms computers can easily read. The ACTUS standard, if implemented across the board, could ideally give regulators and banks a true systemic view of risk.

Everyone agrees that electronic transactions should be as safe as possible, but a PIN mandate will not prevent online or mobile fraud.