Bank technology

Sioux Falls, S.D. comes out at the top of The Boyd Company's ranking of major U.S. cities as data center sites. Most expensive, unsurprisingly? New York.

I recently recounted a personal story to a bank's management team that I've shared frequently over the years. I tell it to drive home the point about the importance of eliminating "clutter" that accumulates in our organizations over time. As the group laughed, I assured them that, sadly, this was a true story.

Program to help marketing managers decide where, when and how to place marketing materials within branches.

ATM maker NCR bought a minority stake in uGenius, which makes videoconferencing technology for banks.

The video-game industry is amping up its defenses after hackers penetrated numerous payments systems last year. Banks could learn from watching.

Major email providers are working with Bank of America, Fidelity Investments and PayPal on a new effort intended to reduce phishing emails.

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For a smaller banks such as the $409 million-asset The Bank of Georgia, figuring out how to use social media safely and legally isn't easy.

The prepaid card company will introduce a bank account with a traditional debit card attached to it sometime this year, chief executive Steve Streit told American Banker.

The head of consumer payments at Google Inc., who was working on the company's mobile wallet, has resigned.

Banks begin turning to Facebook and other sites to size up customers. Regulations require that they proceed with caution.

Once a leader in dial-up Internet connectivity, EarthLink Inc. is lining up banks and other businesses these days as clients for tech services like co-location and disaster-recovery.

The Monrovia, Calif., prepaid card company plans to roll out the bank account with a traditional debit card later this year, chief executive Steve Streit told American Banker.

Fair Isaac Corp. is replacing its chief executive, Mark N. Greene, with a board member, William J. Lansing.

Green Dot Corp.'s fourth-quarter net income rose 76% from a year earlier, to $14.0 million, the prepaid card company said on Thursday evening.

Cash and traditional cards are entrenched. Without rewards, the digital wallets are unlikely to make a dent.

Voice biometrics has had its share of starts and stops as an anti-fraud and authentication tool in the past decade. But a person's voice has more than 100 unique characteristics, compared with only 40 for a fingerprint, so the technology has strong potential for data security.

MasterCard said Wednesday that it is testing a mobile payments system in Australia that lets the user choose whether to use a bar code or an embedded payment chip.

The core banking giant joins a crowded contactless payment market that already includes Google, telecoms and the Wells Fargo/Bank of America/Chase led ClearXchange venture. Its breadth of clients and solution will pressure non-bank and NFC-based ventures.

Green Dot said Thursday that it is working with the AARP Foundation to issue a MasterCard-branded prepaid card in mid-February.