Bank technology

BBVA's purchase this week of Madiva Soluciones will help it solve customer analytics problems. But more importantly, it brings the bank a stable of experienced data scientists.

On its face, the House vote late Thursday to approve a spending bill that included an unrelated provision written by Citigroup was a big legislative victory for the bank and its fellow Wall Street behemoths. Yet it’s also a victory that comes at a high price.

Renaud Laplanche is a happy if somewhat tired man. The company he founded, Lending Club, exceeded most expectations by closing its first day of public trading at $23.43 after starting at $15. But challenges lie ahead for his company and others in the alternative lending space.

The KYC Registry is the next flagship in financial crime compliance, delivering on our commitment to provide community-wide solutions for the industry, says SWIFT CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt.

LendingClub Corp. soared to an $8.52 billion valuation after its initial public offering, shining a spotlight on the fast-growing peer-to-peer lending industry and setting a high bar for a company that aims to transform banking.

Tangerine, Simple, American Express and Discover are some of the financial institutions that use Apple's Touch ID fingerprint-authentication technology to let consumers replace passwords or to add security.

Paul Camp, a veteran of JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, has joined the digital-currency consumer finance company Circle Internet Financial as the startup's new chief financial officer.

Whether the startup's pricey valuation makes sense depends on whether you view it primarily as a tech firm or a financial company. And the answer to that question has big implications for the broader financial services world.

Senate lawmakers pressed government officials about whether they’re doing enough to protect the financial system from cyberattacks on Wednesday, warning that more must be done next year to help banks defend themselves.

New York banks will be subject to extra scrutiny of their chief information security officers, multi-factor authentication practices and many other aspects of data security under the exam process laid out by regulator Benjamin Lawsky.

New York banking regulator Benjamin Lawsky provided details Wednesday about his plan to require the state's financial institutions to strengthen their cyberdefense systems.

TD Bank has settled with the state of Massachusetts after a data breach exposed the personal information of as many as 260,000 customers.

Earlier opposition to the idea appears to have eased in the wake of a new proposal that would use interbank fees to cover the cost of technological upgrades.

LendingClub's initial public offering will be the watershed event for alternative lending that Facebook's IPO was for social media, says Matt Burton, co-founder and CEO of online lending services firm Orchard Platform.

Payfone joins Google, Verizon, and other players who would like to be the gatekeepers of consumers' digital personas. The newcomer to the banking industry hopes its relationships with the four major telecom providers will give it an edge.

Companies seeking to shield valuable data from criminals and government spying should assume the attackers have already penetrated their systems and adjust defensive strategies, security firms McAfee and Symantec said.

Banks would have to upgrade their systems to accommodate faster transactions, and originating banks would pay the receiving financial institutions a fee to cover those costs, under a plan from Nacha, the industry group that sets ACH rules.

fTLD Registry Services, an entity originally formed by The Financial Services Roundtable and the American Bankers Association to secure top-level domains for the banking and insurance industries, has contracted Symantec to provide verification for the newly created .bank and .insurance web domains.

Mobile and online banking, security and analytics are expected to dominate IT spending as banks shift resources to growth initiatives and the figurative cost of keeping the lights on drops.

Many people in Brazil don't have bank accounts-but they do have smartphones. These qualities, in combination with favorable regulations, make the country likely to adopt mobile payments in a big way.