Bank technology

For ex-bankers like Ruth Porat, who is leaving Morgan Stanley for Google, free-flowing cash and a sunnier climate are only part of Silicon Valley’s allure, industry observers note. The tech sector is also mercifully light on regulation.

Social media data offers banks a vast, relatively untapped source of insights about everything from marketing to identifying new customers, talent and potential risk management issues. The key is assembling a team that knows how to mine social media for information.

By poaching Ruth Porat from Morgan Stanley, it's clear Google wants to forge closer relationships with banks. That's because banks hold the key to helping Google expand its Google Wallet mobile-payments product.

Banks are gravitating toward a new technology they think can help customers more easily open mobile accounts: allowing customers to photograph their driver's license from their smartphone to help them auto-fill portions of their application.

Retailers and bankers are teaming up to improve the flow of information regarding cybersecurity.

Lendio, an online lending marketplace for small business, raised $20.5 million of equity capital in a recently completed funding round.

The design of Square Cash's new "$Cashtag" system may seem like a cutesy move to appeal to more consumers, but the underlying changes to the app show that Square's new focus is all business.

Claire Cockerton of U.K. trade group Innovate Finance explains how technology can rehabilitate the global banking industry's reputation, how London became a financial technology hub and why Mayor Boris Johnson was plugging startups in New York last month.

BBVA Compass has selected Kony Inc.'s application design platform as it looks to create some new mobile banking applications, according to a March 23 press release.

An employee's careless tweet or Facebook status update can pose big risks to financial firms, but social media is still a necessary tool for engaging with younger customers.

Banks will only be able to compete with nimble digital startups if they invest in a diverse portfolio of fintech initiatives and avoid foisting traditional, buttoned-down cultures onto fledgling partners.

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It's the time of year when fraudsters target consumers with phony phone calls, claiming to be IRS agents and extorting money. Banks are not the direct victims, but they could be on the hook for executing wire transfers to criminals.

A former executive at Commonwealth Bank of Australia has been charged with bribery after he allegedly awarded a contract to a U.S. technology company owned by Computer Sciences Corp. in return for a payment.

Bitreserve, a payments company started by CNET founder Halsey Minor that seeks to solve Bitcoin's volatility problem, has announced a new partnership with the Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas-Pliego and the support of two new currencies on its platform.

Alongside the requisite ATMs and tablet-bearing salespeople, a New York credit union has installed touchscreens where customers can visualize a path to realizing their financial goals. Wells Fargo is taking a similar approach to credit education online.

Four House lawmakers announced Thursday that they had formed a bipartisan group to focus on "the new and innovative technologies in the payments industry."

Countries including Brazil, Nigeria, Malaysia and India have proved that there are viable ways to find alternatives to branches, use mobile devices to increase the reach of financial services and roll out government-supported financial inclusion projects.

Target agreed to settle with more than 100 million customers whose personal information may have been breached in a database hack in 2013, among the biggest to hobble retailers and banks in recent years.

As lawmakers consider federal notification and information-sharing measures, a state official expressed jurisdictional concerns about creating national standards.