Bank technology

The bank's first chief data officer, A. Charles Thomas, is training his analytical eye on cross-selling opportunities, delivering instantaneous client data to employees and hiring techniques.

Bank of America's website was down for about an hour early Monday afternoon.

The state's superintendent of financial services has softened his stance toward bitcoin and other payment startups and has already shortened New York's money transmitter license application review process, which used to take nine months.

MoneyGram is offering a technology platform that enables banks and retailers to offer alternative financial services beyond just money transfers and bill payments.

Thanks to the rise of online and mobile banking, some banks now have significant customer bases in areas where they have little branch presence. The solution is to carve out a category of virtual banks that have tailored CRA responsibilities and examination standards.

New York may grant transitional licenses to small virtual-currency firms and startups to let them grow before facing the full burden of new regulation, the state's top financial watchdog said.

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center is calling attention to the security risks and potential fixes to a common practice: consumers handing over online banking credentials to financial advice sites.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

Mobile money products are taking off in countries including Bangladesh, Kenya and Somaliland — and banks have a historic opportunity to get involved in this rapidly advancing market.

Green Dot announced Thursday that its revenue and net income rose in the third quarter as the firm found ways to earn more money from its base of 4.6 million active prepaid cards.

Apple's high-profile app could give mobile wallets the jump start they needed.

As banks move analytics closer to the front office, bankers need to change the way they think about the customer.

The transformation of brick-and-mortar offices into high-tech sales centers has become an urgent matter as consumers increasingly transact through digital alternatives, yet branches still generate more sales than any other channel.

Banks will leveraging the built-in camera, geolocation and identity features of phones and tablets in new and profitable ways.

Banks' security investments are rising dramatically as breaches grow more frequent and damaging.

Banks are purging paper to speed up processing like their business depends on it. The payoffs from these workflow improvements include faster processing, stronger loyalty, lower costs and higher revenue.

The bank's partnership with a hot payments startup comes as regulators nudge the industry to speed transactions and as some who initially resisted such calls start to embrace quicker settlement.

Jan Estep, president and CEO of Nacha, discusses the organization's revised proposal to speed transactions on the automated clearing house network and how it improves on the plan that member banks voted down two years ago.

Apple Pay scooped up one million payment cards in its first 72 hours, 60% of which were Visa cards, but MasterCard's chief executive still expressed optimism for the payment network's chances in the rapidly shifting mobile landscape.

CurrentC, the retailer-backed mobile-payment system touted as an alternative to Apple Inc.'s platform, was hacked during a test of the technology, resulting in some e-mail addresses being stolen over the past 36 hours.