Bank technology

One of BTN's seven honorable mentions for Mobile Banker of the Year, U.S. Bank's Niti Badarinath doesn't mind being ahead of the curve on new mobile app features — like offering support for Kindle and using geolocation to combat fraud.

How to innovate when you're in a large, matrixed institution? "Hackathons" are part of the answer for Hari Gopalkrishnan, who leads retail mobile app development at Bank of America and is one of BTN's honorable mentions for Mobile Banker of the Year.

Andres Wolberg-Stok, one of BTN's Mobile Banker of the Year honorable mentions, is creating one code base from which Citi can deliver mobile apps to three dozen consumer markets around the world.

The U.S. and China will hold high-level talks on how to set guidelines for conduct in cyberspace, The New York Times is reporting.

Fraud is a growing problem with mobile devices, but users still want convenience.

Nearly 20 years ago, Chip Mahan's early Internet venture with Security First Network Bank led to the birth of S1 Corp., one of the boom times' most-hyped online-banking technology providers. Today, he's behind a startup small-business lender with another technology offshoot in mind: loan underwriting in the cloud.

Older corporate cash management and banking systems were becoming less popular with Deutsche Bank's younger corporate treasurers. An app marketplace is changing that.

As apps shrink the gap between financial firms and their customers, banks are coping with new and growing risks that accompany mobile devices.

Liberty Deserved? A number of the comments on AmericanBanker.com and BankThink this week were strikingly sympathetic to digital currency issuer Liberty Reserve, which was indicted for alleged money laundering, and its customers. These readers were outraged that the authorities came down so hard on the Costa Rican outfit after serving megabank HSBC with a mere fine for similar money laundering charges. They were also skeptical of the government's explanations of its stance on virtual currencies and fearful for Bitcoin entrepreneurs and users who feel increasingly threatened by government encroachment. Commenting on American Banker Washington Bureau Chief Rob Blackwell's Q&A with Financial Crimes Enforcement Network Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery, one reader questioned her description of Liberty Reserve as the biggest money laundering operation ever. "Did you ask about her selective memory? HSBC's 'pervasively polluted' culture involved more money than Liberty Reserve, for instance." Another commenter saw ulterior motives in the prosecution: "The action against LR [had] nothing to do with money laundering. It was to undermine the growth of Bitcoin which [the government] considers more of a threat than the much greater money laundering by the likes of HSBC (which has more blood on its hands than a 1,000 LRs)." Our own "Monetary Future" columnist, digital currency expert Jon Matonis, noted that Liberty Reserve has been around since 2001, and wondered why the U.S. waited so long to prosecute the company. "Why are their 'crimes' of providing a neutral value transfer service more egregious than they were before?" But at least one reader found the government's position eminently reasonable, writing, "money transmitters need to identify people they transfer money for, and to report suspicious activity...we will either remain serious about money laundering/terrorist financing issues, or we can revert back to our pre-Sept 11 head-in-the-sand mentality." In his own column, Matonis talked to a venture capital fund dedicated to Bitcoin startups that's hired former Treasury officials as advisors, underscoring the increasing importance of compliance smarts to such businesses.

Could cyberattacks bring down the U.S. financial network? Chuck Hagel thinks it's possible. Shielding the U.S. against the destructive potential of digital threats is among the top priorities for the nation, the Defense Secretary said.

The federal agency announced Friday that it was breaking up its complaint database by state and adding money transfer and credit reporting complaints to its already comprehensive look at consumer issues.

A new Facebook app from Citi suggests which concerts people may like based on their profile data.

The threat posed by Google's new Gmail money transmission feature will put the onus on banks to deliver the ultimate person-to-person payments experience, which only they can provide.

Thirty-three percent of Texans say they use mobile banking applications on a smartphone or tablet, up from 20% who said they used such applications in 2011, according to a survey released Thursday by SWACHA.

President Obama has a message for his Chinese counterpart when the two meet next week: China needs to restrain its digital snooping.

"Digital currencies are exciting because of the innovation," but "being a financial institution comes with certain responsibilities," says Fincen Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery in a Q&A.

Denial of service attacks launched to or from phones are among a new breed of security concerns.

Prolexic boasted Thursday that it thwarted the largest distributed-denial-of-service-attack ever recorded (by its own measures).

A new service from Experian sends customers alerts when businesses use their personal information to authenticate transactions.

Public officials talk as if facilitating anonymous financial transactions is in itself somehow nefarious. But there are legitimate reasons to keep online purchases and other activity private.