Bank technology

Catherine Bessant is driving an initiative to centralize and streamline a sprawling technology network at Bank of America. She's got her work cut out for her: the many companies BofA has acquired all came with their own software and hardware, some state-of-the-art and others, not so much. This month, BTN takes an inside look at the challenges facing Bessant and her team, and examines the diffi cult path toward IT modernity at one of the world's largest financialinstitutions.

At Bank of America, Catherine Bessant's perseverance has helped her on a number of fronts.

Data breaches aren't going away, as Bank of America and Citigroup can attest. A group of institutional, tech and research experts offer 10 steps banks can take now to mitigate the risk.

Enterprise data systems are proving to be porous, as a number of breaches over the past few months have affected not only large banks, but major organizations outside of financial services as well.

Driven by economic pressures to account for and manage costs in a moredetailed manner, more banks are outsourcing specific operations ratherthan entire technology functions.

A recent software deal gives the Isis telecom consortium the ability to broaden its mobile wallet capabilities and stay competitive with Google and other mobile payments ventures.

As Bling and FoneCash know all too well, it's hard to get a mobile payments startup up and running despite the hype. It helps to have a leadership team with lots of payment experience, and well-knownbackers.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt about mobile check scanning abound.The truth is, branch deposits are riskier.

Citi's new consumer banking app for the iPad boasts several personal financial management and analytics features that few other financial iPad apps offer.

Five questions with Dan Inendino, head of business banking, marketing, Evergreen Bank.

Not to be outdone by rivals in a month that has seen several new and retooled credit card rewards program announcements, Bank of America Corp. on Wednesday rolled out upgrades to a couple of its core cash-rewards cards.

As Visa has been ramping up its promotion of one-time-use card data for security, Discover Financial Services is winding down its support of a similar technology. The key difference is that the system Visa is pushing is used at the point of sale, whereas the one Discover is discontinuing is used online.

A new five-year contract seals the bank's choice of Monitise's mobile technology.

Payment processor is harnessing technology from Trusteer to help prevent Trojans and other forms of online fraud.

By adding new processing capabilities, the bank is extending payment acceptance to include varied online payment methods for corporate clients that have international footprints.

The bank technology vendor S1's board told shareholders not to accept ACI Worldwide's exchange offer — yet. The board said Wednesday that it is reviewing ACI's Tuesday offer to shareholders in ACI's latest step to disrupt S1's planned merger with Fundtech.

CoreLogic has hired Greenhill & Co. to evaluate the mortgage technology vendor's financial strategy and "explore a wide range of options aimed at enhancing shareholder value," up to and including a possible sale or merger.

Former Mobile Money and BankAnywhere products now known as Mobiliti, but no major product changes have been made, Fiserv says.

A shift toward the use of chip cards is spawning courses in EMV and other new payment technologies.

Mobile payment venture has made many partnership announcements and its telecom members are sinking $100 million into the project. But when will it have a real-world product ready?