Core systems

Hailed as a space- and cost-saver, interactive video teller machines don't always succeed as a strategy. Many banks offer them without a clear business case to justify the investment.

Adam Draper of Boost VC talks about the rise of the blockchain, the challenges of the bitcoin world and the future of banking.

The British challenger bank Mondo raised $1.4 million in 96 seconds, it announced Thursday.

BBVA has recruited Simple co-founder Shamir Karkal to build a platform that would open the bank's application program interfaces to outside fintech companies.

Bank of Prairie Village in Kansas went through a core conversion last year. Its chairman hopes that his sons, who are set to take over the bank eventually, won't be afraid to embrace new technology since they've experienced the scariest of all bank IT projects.

Frandsen Financial took the industry's plan to allow faster payments as a call to action. It invested in automation software, which allowed employees previously bogged down with manual tasks to focus on more meaningful duties.

Asset growth drove the Pennsylvania bank to create software that helps it vet and monitor vendors, with automated tracking of contracts and deadlines and storage of supporting documents.

As community banks need to make their budgets stretch further, some are looking to vendor consolidation as a way to gain a competitive edge through fewer IT headaches and a more uniform customer experience.

There are benefits for banks in fintech collaboration via application programming interfaces, but financial institutions should not let go of customer engagement.

Fintech is a chic topic at Davos, but it's barely a blip on the radar of analysts who lock in on hard numbers during earnings calls. Yet with tech taking a bigger role in financial services, mobile banking or the blockchain might soon become as topical as efficiency ratios or net interest margins.