Bank technology

Avant, an online lending platform that focuses on borrowers with marred credit, announced an agreement Wednesday to raise $325 million in equity financing from blue-chip investors.

BB&T has rolled out a digital banking platform that lets customers customize which features appear once they log in. It saves the bank having to decide what to show and what to hide on devices with different screen sizes.

Bankers need to show they are in control of relationships with outside vendors, must be ready to respond to M&A-related protests and should be as concerned about economic growth as interest rates, according to the St. Louis Fed's supervisory chief.

Credible, a comparison shopping site for private student loans, announced that it has raised $10 million from a group of investors that includes some big names in marketplace lending.

Cloud Lending Solutions, a technology provider to marketplace lenders and other finance companies, announced that it has raised $8 million in venture funding.

Thirteen banks have joined an alliance to develop commercial applications of distributed ledger technology in the financial industry.

Some critics argue that it's a bad idea to introduce chip cards without PIN requirements. But this debate is a distraction from the payments industry's robust and multifaceted efforts to fight cybercrime.

Nacha's same-day ACH payments are unlikely to improve business-to-business payments without additional tweaks. Other payment rails can also help put a solid infrastructure in place.

Bankers, investors and analysts stop short of declaring a bubble. But the fintech startup and investor fields are getting crowded, and there's bound to be a culling of the herd.

The deadline for EMV migration in this country is this Thursday. Here's what will and won't happen on that day, and what challenges lie ahead for banks and their customers.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including how postal banking could help low-income people in the U.S. and the continuing debate over interchange fees.

An open-source analytical engine called Spark is becoming popular in banking circles to get real-time insights on consumer transactions and the customers themselves.

The collaboration between financial institutions and technology firms runs deep, but banks' recent criticism of lax regulatory oversight for nonbanks reveals fissures.

Now a buzzword for disruptive technologies, Fintech was the name of a research project initiated by Citicorp in the 1990s, when the Citigroup predecessor was trying to shed its image of being "out of touch with market preferences."

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.

A Nevada firm is trying to make debt collections easier, friendlier and more interesting on a smartphone app designed for the underbanked. The new app, called PaySwag, is being marketed to banks and other companies to foster a more proactive approach to collections.

Silicon Valley Bank and MasterCard are accepting applications for the fourth installment of their startup accelerator program Commerce.Innovated.

The fingerprint records of about 5.6 million current and former federal workers, contractors and job applicants were stolen in the breach of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s computer system, up from an initial estimate of 1.1 million, the agency said Wednesday.

The marketplace lender is paying $30 million in cash plus an undisclosed amount of stock. It plans to use BillGuard’s apps, which come with detailed information about their users’ financial habits, to attract new borrowers.

A task force convened by the Federal Reserve has made substantial progress in its first few months, but the path to real-time payment in the U.S. is still littered with challenges.