Though banks are bigger in peer-to-peer payments overall, Venmo is better at functionality and branding and millennials love it. Now banks are launching Zelle with high hopes and the advantage of real-time speed. Can they catch up? Should they even bother?

Activehours, a direct-to-consumer startup that lets hourly wage earners name their paydays, announced it has raised $22 million of funding.

Regulators here made strides to encourage innovation in 2016, while Brexit cast doubt on the London fintech boom. Yet the cross-Atlantic payments battle is just beginning.

2016 was very good to these financial services executives, who succeeded where others failed, sold their businesses for large sums, felt the love of regulators or could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Banks are grappling with new challenges in trying to work with voice assistants like Alexa in Amazon's Echo to allow customers to check balances and perform other tasks. But with voice banking on the horizon, banks cannot afford to stall their efforts.

Wells Fargo's innovation group has appointed Peggy Mangot for the newly created position of senior vice president of its design and delivery leadership team.

Royal Bank of Canada has introduced a video chat service for its small-business banking customers whose hectic lives may not allow for frequent branch visits.

Clarity Money, an artificial intelligence-driven payment concierge, launched on Wednesday, a move its founders hope will provide consumers with an advanced financial health tool.

The bank's new CEO, Onur Genc, fresh from Turkey, will have to find a way to leverage the considerable tech and innovation investments the bank has made and strengthen the brand's U.S. presence.

Banks have used biometrics for about a decade, but there are a number of hurdles that banks, device makers and customers need to overcome before passwords are history.

The new year will bring risk in marketplace lending, but progress will be made in micropayments platforms and regulators embracing innovators.

Since technology is so ingrained in every aspect of banking, some say the idea of looking at tech spending as a stand-alone budget item is antiquated.

Now that the OCC has proposed a limited-purpose bank charter for fintech companies, a host of innovative new banks will soon flood the market — or maybe not.

Citizens Financial Group in Providence, R.I., said Tuesday that it expects to start offering digital small-business loans in mid-2017.

Just weeks after it shook up its executive ranks and suspended efforts to pursue new customers, the New York-based business lender confirmed Friday that it is eliminating dozens of jobs.

To act like a startup — as many banks say they want to do — institutions must employ a nontechnical strategy: build services based on customers say they want.

It is time for financial services to rethink retirement savings given changing work habits, customers' expectations of technology and the need for better transparency in 401(k)s.

The tech firm behind USAA's digital assistant has introduced an authentication tool that identifies customers by the sound of their voice or by their facial features.

Call it the banking equivalent of a farmers market in Brooklyn: A startup is building a platform to highlight mission-driven banks for prospective customers who want to know how their money is lent.

BlueVine, an online small business lender based in Redwood City, Calif., said Wednesday that it has closed a $49 million funding round.