Bank technology

With the digital currency Bitcoin making inroads with nationally known merchants like Zynga and Overstock.com, a professional sports enterprise has decided to take its best shot.

American Express has escaped serious harm from the recent and massive Target data breach, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Campbell told investors Thursday.

American Express Co., the biggest credit-card issuer by purchases, said fourth-quarter profit matched analysts' estimates.

Digital currency startup Circle Internet Financial has expanded its high-profile lineup of leaders, appointing a Goldman Sachs (GS) director to its board of directors and naming veterans from American Express (AXP) and Google (GOOG) to its advisory board.

A tour of PayPal's innovation showroom offers a glimpse of the company's latest technology, how PayPal is tying together e-commerce channels, and how it intends to dominate the mobile wallet the way it has online payments.

Some of the nation's largest merchants are rolling out branded cards that offer many of the banking services their tens of millions of customers crave — plus loyalty rewards. For banks, the cards may pose a new threat, as well the opportunity to partner and reach new segments of the population.

Citigroup (NYSE: C) plans to send new debit cards to customers affected by the Target data breach, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Level, a maker of budgeting apps for millennials, rolled out an Android app Wednesday.

U.S. banks and merchants face mounting pressure to catch up with technology used in Europe, Asia and Latin America to secure credit- and debit-card data after tens of millions of Target Corp. customers were exposed.

Network giant Cisco provides a geeky view of network vulnerabilities in its latest Annual Security Report.

Duncan Niederauer, the head of the New York Stock Exchange's parent company, this week contemplated the consequences of his future retirement and urged his fellow financial executives to "be humble" about their professional clout.

The bill reintroduced by Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., comes on the heels of customer data breaches at multiple high-profile retailers.

HCL Technologies (HCLTECH), a $4.8 billion global IT services provider, announced Wednesday that is has signed a partnership with CSC (CSC), a $13.5 billion provider of IT services and solutions.

Policymakers say they want to bring "underbanked" groups into the traditional banking system for safer consumer options, small-business growth, a sound banking system and other laudable reasons. But today's rules and aggressive enforcement work against these goals.

If retailers want to reap the rewards of consumer sales, they should also take an active role in protecting their data.

With no more lines and far more banks to choose from, I want the one I select to handle my exceptional transactions exceptionally. I want to leave my bank knowing that my visit was and always will be worthwhile.

Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) plans to expand its tech banking division into New York this year.

The nation's fourth-largest bank by assets convened a meeting in the Bay Area Tuesday with experts on the digital currency and payment system, and other systems like it, to obtain a better understanding.

According to its quarterly report released Tuesday, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation technology and services provider Prolexic reported worldwide DDoS attacks remained at an all-time high during the final quarter of 2013, including some of the largest attacks ever seen.

Banks should brace for smaller mergers as technology vendors look to provide more one-stop shopping.