Bank technology

FinTech Forward, a collaboration of American Banker and BAI, brings together the research, media, and event capabilities of banking’s top two professional information and education organizations.

The leaders of the most successful tech companies serving the financial services industry share hints about their business and product strategies for the coming year and observations about customers' tech preferences.

To identify the fintech startups deserving of special recognition this year, a team of American Banker editors, BAI staff and consultant Jeanne Capachin debated the merits of self-nominees and companies we know. These are the ten that matter for 2015.

Terrible password-keeping habits will force banks to beef up security on their end, a study suggests.

A Brooklyn, N.Y., startup wants to eliminate fees long hated by ATM customers and replace the lost income with revenue from ads that play on teller-machine screens. Yet questions have been raised about whether that is easier said than done.

Nacha CEO Janet Estep discusses how her organization polices bad actors on the automated clearing house network, why it doesn't single out specific merchant categories as risky, and how nudging the industry toward "push" payments will help.

Regulators are expecting financial institutions to provide detailed modeling of deposits and ever-greater documentation in the next round of stress tests, bankers and consultants say.

U.S. Postal Service employee and customer data may have been compromised in a computer hack that lasted at least seven-and-a-half months, the agency said.

A proposal to improve the way online banking information is shared with data aggregators has sparked a debate over a decades-old practice.

U.S. and European agencies shut down 410 hidden web domains, arrested 17 suspects and seized bitcoins worth about $1 million in a joint operation targeting the Tor network, which allows people to use the Internet anonymously.

Home Depot, which suffered a data breach between April and September, said 53 million e-mail addresses were taken by hackers during the attack, in addition to the 56 million payment cards that were previously disclosed.

Soltra Edge promises to let financial institutions react to cyberthreats in milliseconds — without human intervention — by translating bankers' warnings from plain English into a format that security software can read.

Narayan Bharadwaj, the former general manager and head of mortgage technology vendor Wipro Gallagher Solutions, will serve as president and chief operating officer of the newly created professional services division of document preparation vendor DocuTech.

As bitcoins become more popular, banks should consider the credit risks associated with borrowers who own digital currencies and take steps to mitigate potential pitfalls.

As banks struggle to make sense of their wealth of customer information, the burgeoning industry of online marketplace lending is finding novel ways to glean insights from unconventional data points.

The Securities Investor Protection Corp. on Wednesday issued a warning about recent phishing scams targeted at brokerage clients.

Eugene Danilkis, CEO of fintech startup Mambu, discusses banks' efforts to finance small and medium-size enterprises in developing countries, either indirectly (by funding microfinance organizations) or directly (by creating special lending subsidiaries unencumbered by legacy processes). He also explains how microfinance has moved beyond old stereotypes of lending to "basket weavers and fruit sellers"; why banks should heed Bill Gates' financial-inclusion message; and what the U.S. can learn from London about financial innovation.

FreeATM has launched its first set of surcharge-free automated teller machines across the New York metropolitan area.

While "double-dipping" fraud is reportedly rare, vendors want to stay ahead of a problem and help bankers feel comfortable raising deposit limits and expanding the user base for mobile deposit.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators released a document summarizing their general findings from recent cybersecurity assessments at community-size financial institutions.