Bank technology

All participants in financial services will have to start behaving, thinking, organizing themselves as technology companies and focus on three things: technology, data and customer (or, better yet, user) experience.

Eastern Bank's 18-month-old innovation unit, run by startup veterans, is preparing to release its first product as the industry continues to allocate resources to internal tech labs while wondering when and how such efforts will pay off.

The banking industry largely praised the passage of a major Senate cybersecurity bill Tuesday night, but concerns are mounting about the inclusion of eleventh-hour language that could prompt new rules for financial institutions.

Apple Pay debuted last year as an enabler for many banks that were itching to get involved with mobile payments. But a few banks were able to leap ahead of Apple Pay with their own technology.

There’s no doubt that blockchain technology will facilitate disruptive innovations in finance, but a world of private ledgers sounds eerily similar to a range of “private Internets.”

The founder of an IPO services company that was sold this month to Nasdaq has lined up several investors for his new company, which will invest in bitcoin and blockchain developers.

Nasdaq has unveiled its blockchain technology initiative. The platform uses blockchain technology to issue shares for privately held companies on the Nasdaq Private Market and record their transfers. Clients receive a comprehensive record of issuance and transfer.

The Senate approved a key cybersecurity bill Tuesday after several days of debate on the chamber floor — and several years of lobbying by business groups, including bankers.

JPMorgan Chase entered the digital wallet wars in announcing Chase Pay, a product that will launch next year. Although mobile payments have been more bark than bite so far, the company says that its product plans to use loyalty programs to lure reluctant consumers.

Customers Bancorp in Wyomissing, Pa., is building an online borrowing experience for its small-business clients.

Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson's term as chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association underscores how the Internet-and-phone channel has grown from a quirky novelty to transformative force in the industry.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has hired a former FBI deputy director to lead a new consulting group to address financial crime issues.

Led by a team of financial services and regulatory veterans and young techies, Privacy.com represents the first mainstream attempt to build a business explicitly around transactional privacy in the era of Edward Snowden and Ashley Madison.

Most mobile wallets clearly favor one industry over another, with banks and retailers often pitted against each other in a battle over payment card fees. JPMorgan Chase just made a stunning move by conceding some of this ground to the benefit of the Merchant Customer Exchange.

The bank owners of the clearXchange payments network and the Early Warning risk management service hope that by combining the two programs, they can remain in control of technologies that will become core to mobile commerce.

Recipients of the 2015 FinTech Forward awards discuss where banks fall short in competing with startups.

SunTrust has removed a clause from its severance agreement that laid-off employees claimed would have put them on call for two years to answer questions without compensation. Loss of institutional knowledge may be the cost of offshoring.

The degree of success Starling Bank achieves could foreshadow how similar digital banking entrants in the United States might perform given a narrower product selection, a commitment to mobile, and a focus on collecting and analyzing data.

Recipients of the 2015 FinTech Forward awards discuss how banks can remain competitive with nimbler, innovative startups.

With the EMV liability shift having just passed, banks and merchants alike are scrambling to comply with the card network-imposed deadline.