U.S. Bancorp recently began offering paperless account opening after seeing good results from electronically signed and documented lending. Yet a large segment of the industry still hesitates to use this technology, for legal, technical and cultural reasons.

Banks and other traditional payment companies need to keep an open mind when assessing the market today as new entrants build systems to disrupt the old models, said Christine Cumming, first vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Biometric authentication may seem all the rage now that Apple uses fingerprint authentication in its mobile wallet, but the Bitcoin ATM provider RoboCoin has concluded that biometric technology can be more of a hassle than a help.

Whether financial services executives love or hate Bitcoin, experts say the digital currency's underlying technology will inevitably affect their businesses. And the next generation of consumers are driving this change.

Kim Kardashian may be an overexposed reality star, but she's also a tech entrepreneur with a short-lived past in the payments industry. And several companies in the Bitcoin space are repeating her biggest mistake by offering a plastic payment card.

NCR's updating its NCR Silver point of sale system to support Bitcoin transactions as retailer acceptance of virtual currency starts to accelerate.

Bitcoin merchant services provider BitPay added support for contactless Near Field Communication payments through its new Bitcoin Checkout App, eliminating several steps in its payment process.

The New York Department of Financial Services will likely institute an on-ramp for new Bitcoin businesses — and possibly any other kind of money transmitting startups — as a way for them to launch without being burdened by costly licensing requirements.

New York may offer transitional licenses to small virtual-currency firms and startups to let them grow before facing the full burden of new regulation, the state’s top financial watchdog said.

As regulators heighten their scrutiny of Bitcoin businesses, several digital currency supporters are looking for business models that do not subject them to the cumbersome requirements they would face as money services businesses or money transmitters.

The Apple Pay effect on m-commerce should result in more attention for mobile-heavy Bitcoin transactions, but virtual currencies are still being held back by unclear regulations, according to payment executives.

Bitcoin payments enabler Bitnet Technologies has secured $14.5 million in funding that it will use to fund a push into Asia and continental Europe.

New York regulator Benjamin Lawsky may use the cybersecurity rules he's proposed for virtual-currency companies as a model for traditional banks. That would subject the financial institutions his agency supervises to the most stringent data-security rules anywhere.

Bitcoin adopters in Ohio have been some of the most vocal about how state laws need to evolve to encourage the use of digital currency, but the Ohio government seems to want that change to come from the courts rather than the legislature.

Blockchain Ltd., which runs the world’s most popular wallet for storing bitcoins, raised more than $30 million in its first outside round of funding.

The cryptocurrency software provider KnCMiner has created a new Bitcoin wallet for iPhone users.

PayStand, an e-commerce gateway for alternative and traditional forms of payment, is opening up its application programming interface (API) to support payments with credit cards, e-checks and Bitcoin.

Coinapult, a Bitcoin wallet startup based in Panama, has raised $775,000 in venture capital with backing from FirstMark and plans to use the funds to reach new markets.

Circle Internet Financial, a Bitcoin startup, has launched its Web-based consumer wallet product out of beta for general availability globally.

PayPal is going slow when it comes to Bitcoin, limiting its current focus to emerging channels and relying on partnerships with virtual-currency processors in North America.