Bank technology

Mike Kennedy is the driving force behind clearXchange, a bold moveby Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Chase to simplify peer-to-peerpayments. The partners hope the initiative will eventually helpbroaden financial relationships through increased consumercomfort with mobile as a payments channel. The same objective ison PayPal and Google's radar.

Most mobile payment technologies are designed to turn the mobile phone into a virtual wallet, capable of authenticating users, accessing data, delivering bills, presenting customers with options and actually executing payments. The following is a snapshot of some of the key technologies that turn mobile phones into payment machines.

As the economy strengthens, innovation is the only way to drive business growth and create new jobs.

Alerts are a high-impact piece of a bank's outreach to consumers, if they are executed properly. Expanding into new channels makes that tough.

CFOs are making more IT investment decisions then ever. But CIOs canreassert themselves.

Managing their own finances online and iPad-like devices are both popular with consumers.

The FFIEC's new rules for how banks should secure their onlinebanking software offers small banks little benefit but much new cost.

A chat with Prabhat Vira, head of global transaction services, Citizens Financial Group.

Banks are gathering data on friends, followers and likes with the aid of social media. But privacy and risk issues abound, and wary consumers turn to privacy-preserving tools such as Intelliprotect and SafetyWeb, which promise to prevent identity fraud.

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Never, ever, give Twitter accounts to stockbrokers. If you give thousands of commission-based sales people access to broadcast media, someone is bound to say something stupid.

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal has some banks doubting the methods they use to verify that callers are who they claim to be. One company that verifies calls says inquries from banks have spiked in recent weeks.

While attention continues to be showered on mobile banking and mobile payments, solid growth is occurring in the online banking channel, which is the preferred banking route for a fast-growing segment of Americans.

Expanding beyond credit will enable merchants to expand products offered online

The tech firm will deploy its eCAS2 to support an expansion into digital banking as Western bank IT shops target China's rapidly evolving banking market.

Combining the bank's foreign exchange services with Fundtech's payment processing software, it is hoped, will bring new value to both.

Bankers are relying on account notifications to break the ice for mobile banking and to diminish fraud. But if an alert is hard to understand, the message is lost.

Diebold said it is providing automated teller machines that will improve security at 100 BB&T locations.

Cards payments processor Heartland Payments System Inc. on Thursday said it expects its 2011 earnings to be higher than it previously forecasted after reporting a jump in second-quarter profit and sales.

By creating a simpler online onboarding process, the banks hope to reduce the rate of abandoned applications and better match customers to products.