Bank technology

Correspondent banking has long relied on a costly, multistep process to settle transactions. Now banks must weigh whether to adopt cryptocurrency technology that allows for faster, cheaper settlements or risk getting pushed out of the business entirely.

California assemblyman Matt Dababneh, D-Encino, has proposed AB 1326, a bill that provides guidelines for any individual or business that wants to start using virtual currency.

BBVA has spent about $3.6 billion on technology since 2011 to expand online and mobile-banking services and prepare for what its chairman Francisco Gonzalez has described as an existential threat from firms like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Roughly 12.7 million Americans were hit with identity fraud in 2014, a 3% drop from a year earlier, while losses tied to that fraud fell 11% to $16 billion, said the study, which was released by Javelin Strategy & Research.

The Wisconsin bank's cautious approach to technology and other innovations says a lot about its overall philosophy. It is treading carefully on Apple Pay, marketplace lending and other cutting-edge items while it is encouraged by its customers' switch to electronic banking.

Banks have to invest in mobile technology in order to keep up with millennials. But bankers also need opportunities to rub shoulders with young customers — and small, conveniently situated branches give them an opportunity to do so.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Microsoft Corp. are among 32 technology, banking and retail companies urging lawmakers to pass legislation that provides legal protection for sharing hacking threats.

To court young talent, banks are reimagining their ads for positions like call center agents and video tellers as YouTube clips. They are also finding ways to make applications easier to fill out on mobile devices.

A Google executive has confirmed the company has established Android Pay, a previously rumored platform upon which developers can build payments into applications.

Uber Technologies Inc. said an unauthorized third party accessed the company's database last year and may have taken data on about 50,000 drivers.

Bank of the West has joined the early adopters of technology that lets customers pay bills by photographing them with their smartphones, making mobile bill payment easier and potentially reinforcing the customer-retention benefits of online bill pay.

Jack Hartings is a vocal proponent of reduced regulation for small banks. But the CEO of Peoples Bank in Ohio wants Washington to force other industries to share the burden of improving cybersecurity and cleaning up after breaches.

Mere days after disclosing that Google Inc. purchased Softcard's technology and intellectual property, the telcos' mobile wallet venture began publicly disclosing its plans to shut down.

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 from our social media platforms.

The Bank of England will research whether issuing a digital currency such as Bitcoin would help it achieve its monetary policy, financial stability and regulatory goals.

Prosper Marketplace, an online lender for consumer loans, has found a new source of referrals: community banks.

As you can guess from the title of his book, "BitCon: The Naked Truth About Bitcoin," author Jeffrey Robinson takes a caustic view of the Internet currency and payment system. He explains why he thinks Bitcoin's real-time, public ledger is insufficiently transparent for law enforcement in the first of three parts of a conversation with American Banker's Marc Hochstein.

Small banks don't have the budgets of large-bank competitors, but with nimbleness and creativity they are sometimes first out of the gate with innovative technology, from real-time payments to biometric authentication. We scoured the land for examples of tech-savvy community banks and chose the following 10 standouts.

Across the country, community banks are defying the stereotype of small institutions as technological laggards, sometimes introducing useful digital features well ahead of the better-resourced and purportedly savvier big banks.

Small banks don't have the budgets of large-bank competitors, but with nimbleness and creativity they are sometimes first out of the gate with innovative technology, from real-time payments to biometric authentication. We scoured the land for examples of tech-savvy community banks and chose the following 10 standouts.