Bank technology

Microsoft announced Thursday it has purchased PhoneFactor, a multifactor authentication solutions provider with many financial institution clients.

Storage and cloud computing company EMC has teamed up with the nonprofit National Cyber Security Alliance to offer consumers a tool for assessing their exposure to digital danger.

The universal consumer demand for bill payment makes the service particularly well-suited to bringing people into the financial mainstream.

Intuit veteran Omar Green has left the company to launch a start-up called wallet.AI, which will focus on the intersection of mobile, big data, human cognition and financial services.

Mobile remote deposit capture is proving popular across a wide range of market segments, including credit unions and other smaller institutions which can compensate for smaller branch networks. But like larger banks, whether it's wise to charge for the service is still debatable.

Starbucks plans to accept purchases from the Square mobile wallet beginning next month, and it also plans to list all 7,000 of its company-owned stores in the Square directory, the Seattle-based coffee seller said Oct. 4.

Aramark cafeteria customers in Basking Ridge, NJ at Verizon's Corporate Headquarters will be the first to get to tap and go at the point of sale with their phones.

The e-commerce giant Amazon.com has started making installment loans to merchants, in the latest outside challenge to banks' traditional business.

JPMorgan Chase will use Swift for managing transaction standards.

DHCU Community Credit Union hopes to reduce expense and IT tasks by shifting to the web-based solution.

Cognizant Technology Solutions has announced an alliance with Monitise to innovate mobile services.

Bank of the West has already begun using Detica NetReveal software to detect suspicious online, wire and ACH payments.

More community banks are paying vendors for online courses that teach workers about the raft of new regulations, how to be a manager and other topics. The new way is cheaper and faster, but has drawbacks.

Prosper Marketplace, the online peer-to-peer loan facilitator, announced Oct. 3 that it hired Josh Tonderys, a former executive at Barclaycard US, to be its chief risk officer.

The bank is placing its stake in the crowded global treasury management market by taking on the tricky IT task of building a centralized payments hub for its financial services and corporate clients.

TraceSecurity has launched TraceCSO, a software offering delivered via the cloud that helps banks manage their data security.

NCR announced Wednesday that Cincinnati payments processor Vantiv has certified NCR's Aptra Edge ATM software. That means that Vantiv (formerly Fifth Third Processing) will allow NCR's ATM management software to run over its network on any teller machine.

Wal-Mart is dipping one more toe into financial services by letting customers reload a range of prepaid cards at its registers — for a fee.

Looking beyond passwords and pins, InAuth announced a new voice biometrics-based authentication module for mobile transactions today.

Computer pioneer Bill Fisher dispenses wisdom, cash and sometimes tough love to fintech startups in the Midwest.