Bank technology

New guidelines proposed by the Federal Reserve last month do not go far enough to define who can get an account and how, according to a joint comment letter from several banking trade associations. The process has become contentious as more fintechs seek access to the reserve system.

Health care, home improvement, cannabis, gaming and college students are among the areas banks are targeting with the help of innovative tools.

The Federal Reserve has hired five executives from the stablecoin issuer Circle and at least one employee of Ripple since 2019 as part of its technology-focused recruiting efforts. It plans to do more hiring in the years ahead to aid its work on faster payments and central bank digital currencies.

Apple is developing its own payment processing technology and infrastructure for future financial products, part of an ambitious effort that would reduce its reliance on outside partners over time, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Banks must comply quickly with fast-moving sanctions against the Kremlin and have to spot questionable Russian companies and wealthy individuals. At the same time, some need to deal with settlement risk of trades that involve rubles. Sophisticated data sharing and analysis are making it easier to do the job.

Five Star Bank, which is based in a rural part of New York state, has embraced digital lending, banking-as-a-service, real-time payments, bitcoin and more. “Those that don’t innovate don’t survive,” says Chief Administrative Officer Sean Willett.

The bank’s unified digital plans include personalization and a customized mobile dashboard encompassing all the business a customer does with BofA.

The work of creating a possible digital dollar inched ahead Thursday with research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston into the code that could eventually support such a currency.

The bank is working with a tech company to personalize customer communications using proprietary data. It's an alternative to cookies, which are becoming less viable as data privacy laws become stricter.