Bank technology

Vantiv (VNTV), the payments processor, is buying Litle & Co., which processes payments for companies that sell to goods and services to consumers via the Internet, for $361 million.

Just as it has done in the past for other charities, Wells Fargo (WFC) is allowing its automated teller machine customers to donate to the American Red Cross in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Fundtech announced Tuesday that its payments platform is compatible with two Oracle (ORCL) database products.

Swift, the international payments messaging group, has added one of the world’s biggest banks to its network to connect to a European securities settlement system.

In a recent survey by the Banking Industry Architecture Network, 78% of bankers said they believe the adoption of a services-oriented architecture will result in a 25-50% reduction in banking IT costs.

Bitcoin and other virtual currencies can contribute positively to financial innovation but also subject users to various risks, according to a report published recently by the European Central Bank.

EMC (EMC) has agreed to buy Silver Tail Systems, a privately held company that helps clients fend off fraudsters and Web-based attackers.

The storm may have passed, but its effects on big banks and their customers are far from over.

Users of SaveUp, which offers prizes for debt reduction and savings, enjoyed improving their financial habits and said they liked their financial institution better as a result.

Swift, the international payment messaging group that has long sought to increase membership among "corporates," announced that more than 1,000 corporations have joined its corporate treasury user community.

The coming year will be "the year of voice biometrics" for authenticating bank customers, according to Al Pascual, security, risk and fraud analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research. Consumers want it and banks can afford it, research shows.

Banks like Huntington Bancshares and Mercantile Bank of Michigan have no immediate plans to upgrade to Windows 8 internally, which is a typical stance of businesses toward enterprise upgrades.

More than one third of commercial bankers are conducting manual data entry for tasks that ought to be mandated, according to a survey released Monday.

Social media is a work in progress at some banks, which are still using venues such as email to communicate information to staff in the eye of Hurricane Sandy.

Two shopping experiences and a well-timed commercial from Isis indicate tapping a payment-capable phone against a reader may, in fact, be so much easier than swiping a plastic card … so long as merchants have complete buy-in.

Thanksgiving and the ensuing shopping sprees are a few weeks away, but a group of merchants who accept the digital currency Bitcoin are planning their own Black Friday before then.

New Forrester research finds old-fashioned channels, like the phone call, matter almost as much as online and mobile banking services.

Numerix, an analytics software company, plans to use Microsoft's cloud platform, Windows Azure, for more of its offerings.

While banks have reason to be prepared for and concerned about further cyber attacks, there's reason to believe that the perpetrators can and will be caught.

Because its customers have already gravitated toward remote check capture and online wire transfers, business is carrying on fairly normally at The Westchester Bank as Hurricane Sandy approaches.