Bank technology

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.

UniRush said Thursday that it is eliminating a string of fees for its reloadable prepaid RushCard and also launching a new pricing plan for customers.

MovenBank plans to be a mobile bank for the smartphone age. But perhaps more intriguing, it will use social media data to inform its credit decisions and to determine pricing.

Hired to guide mortgage technology company's infrastructure design and operations as it migrates from selling software licenses to providing software as a service.

Prepaid card companies have had great success at attracting the underbanked, but their prices remain high compared to banks' — and they might have no choice but to keep them high.

Banks lost billions of dollars in overdraft revenue last year, even as they passed on higher fees to consumers, according to a study by Moebs Services Inc.

Earlier this month, Citi announced the expansion of its popular "thankyou" program with a new Facebook app. If the number of likes (185,000 and counting) on Citi's page is any indication, it appears Citi has found a compelling way to engage its youngest and most fickle customers in the place they spend most of their digital time.

To help comply with new FFIEC online security guidelines, the Florida community bank is using a feature that allows consumers to access only a "safe list" of websites during a secure protected online banking session.