Bank technology

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.

Kevin Cummings, the New Jersey company's CEO, transformed Investors to sizable bank prior to its second-step conversion last May. With $2.2 billion in capital and an updated core system, Cummings has his sights on the company's next growth phase.

Large banks and card issuers are ready for the U.S. shift to chip-and-PIN technology, according to a report issued Wednesday. But the drop in fraud that is expected to result is unlikely to come any time soon.

Branch closures can prompt online blowback as community members worry about employee layoffs and stranded customers. A bank's best move is to get in front of the issue and respond directly to locals' concerns.

Ripple Labs has hired Anja Manuel, a former U.S. State Department official, as an adviser to the company, the cryptocurrency payments startup is expected to announce Wednesday.

An outage that crippled the Internal Revenue Service's ability to process 4506-T forms for nearly two weeks has been resolved, but the capacity constraints in the tax transcript service are an ongoing challenge for the mortgage industry.

SAS has launched a new solution designed to allow banks to rapidly test anti-money laundering scenarios, the business analytics software and services provider announced March 16.

A look at three former bankers trying their hands at fintech startups at a time when investment in the sector is flush and banks are desperate for new ideas for digital transformation.

A spike in security breaches might make such protection more appealing to customers, even though regulators are taking a closer look at banks that offer such add-on products.

Vikram Pandit and John Mack, the former chief executive officers of Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley, are among investors who provided $130 million in capital to Dataminr, a company that analyzes Twitter posts to provide clients with news.

Westamerica Bancorp. probably expected little trouble when it asked for regulatory permission to close a small branch in northern California. Wrong! Welcome to the world of online petitions and social media.