Bank technology

The bank long known for its "branches of the future" is rolling out Microsoft Surface applications, piloting videoconferencing for investment advisers and figuring out how to work with customers' devices in the branches.

The company is setting up two branch technology labs and reinvesting in branch upgrades, adding digital display walls, iPad apps and kiosks equipped with telepresence.

Huntington's new SVP of customer experience, David Hawkins, was recruited from Umpqua to help drive a branch upgrade that draws heavily on use of video for marketing and service. The challenge of renovating a wide variety of branch stock awaits.

Welcome to the July issue of Bank Technology News. It's a landmark for us — we've completely redesigned the magazine and added a host of new recurring features and departments that bring into sharper focus the ideas and the people that shape this business.

Should the Fed be given the authority to create and approved vendor list for fraud-protection technology?

New mobile devices and operating systems hit the market frequently, and it can be hard to keep up. That places a premium on having the right in-house talent.

Perception is reality. If consumers believe mobile payments are unsafe, then banks need to show they're building the right layers of security into their smartphone payment networks.

Instilling fear into its competitors' hearts, Walmart is taking its kiosk convenience to another level with a new merchandising unit that lets consumers create their own debit cards.

Banks spend far less than other industries on innovative technologies — a grave mistake that must be fixed.

Union Bank has hired long-time Zions tech exec John Itokazu to be its new chief information and operations officer. He most recently held the same job at Zions, where he worked in various positions for more than 30 years.

India has its first app designed specifically for small mobile devices and it offers more than the traditional banking features.

Kevin Lynch, the senior vice president of ecommerce at 1st Mariner Bank in Baltimore, answers 5 questions about the bank's social media presence.

Key players in payments are discussing how technology in IBM's supercomputer Watson might revolutionize fraud monitoring or credit evaluation, and even sit in for human operators.

Banks must balance the urge to make investments for a smartphone world against the needs of today's customers — and a majority of them use standard cell phones.

The online and mobile payment startup says it has been building a payment network called Grid that will be more secure than the Visa and MasterCard card networks.

States' efforts to rein in fly-by-night companies are starting to have an effect on some payments startups' operations.

In its first major play to connect its mobile-payments service with social media, Starbucks Coffee Co. now lets its mobile payment users send gift cards to friends on Facebook.

Its reader for tablets, announced Wednesday but not available until next year, is meant to serve a different market than its reader for smartphones.

Fiserv Inc.'s deal to buy the software vendor CashEdge Inc. narrows the field of contenders vying for dominance in the growing person-to-person payments space.

Dynamics Inc. made a splash last year with the launch of a Citi-issued multipurse card that has a built-in screen and keypad, but all of those features are duplicated by the mobile wallet systems that have been announced since then — including Google Wallet, which also has Citi's support.