Bank technology

After years of providing financial services, Walmart is becoming a more formidable bank competitor with the addition of American Express's checking account alternative, Bluebird.

Software manages and protects the authentication keys that networked computers use to validate one another.

The Bluebird card will run on American Express's Serve platform and allow many ways of loading money.

A LinkedIn discussion thread mulls a potential hazard of rigid risk management: Does an unyielding concern for risk impede financial institutions from coming up with creative solutions to traditional problems?

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The credit union's new branch uses augmented reality to drive a digital cash game. Grow hopes to attract a new generation of members and drive traffic to social media sites.

FIS Global is launching PayNet, a new transaction type that looks like an ACH payment, but moves cash quickly over a system that resembles a debit card network.

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.