The payments industry is a hotbed of innovation, and many of its larger players are eager to claim patents on new developments.

The Madison, Wis.-based think tank's latest initiative is another sign of the increasing emphasis the credit union industry is placing on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Calculating the average U.S. phone bill to be around $80 a month, San Francisco-based Digit has established a way for consumers to more easily set aside money for that expense.

The financial wellness fintech focused initially on building an app that helped people understand their financial picture, CEO Jon Schlossberg says.

Moving to an open banking system comes with both costs and benefits that each bank will need to weigh before diving in.

Users of the challenger bank's app can automatically save money over the course of a month to cover their mobile charges.

The fintech community was both surprised and energized by recent news that Visa has agreed to acquire Plaid, one of the nation’s largest fintech platforms for financial data analytics.

Tink, a Swedish fintech that developed an open banking platform used by 2,500 European banks, has secured $100 million in funding from various investors.

Ludwig, a former regulator and CEO of Promontory Financial, and Mahan, the head of Live Oak Bancshares, say they want to back tech startups that support community banks. The ABA and ICBA are among the fund's investors.

Banks in the U.S. should take note of these requirements before opening their systems to third-party developers.

Last week, Indian regulators ordered an antitrust probe of Walmart and Amazon while Jeff Bezos and other Amazon execs traveled to New Delhi to tout a $1 billion investment to digitize local businesses. The message is U.S. investment is welcome, as long as U.S.-driven data mining is kept at bay.

Adam Dell, founder of Clarity Money and now head of product at Marcus by Goldman Sachs, explains the design theory behind the new app.

Truist emphasizes high-touch, high-tech focus with new logo; Wells Fargo loses another patent lawsuit to USAA; what the Visa-Plaid merger means for banks, fintechs; and more from this week's most-read stories.

Data security and infrastructure custodian Very Good Security (VGS) received a strategic investment from Visa, which has been spending heavily this week on fintech.

Visa's deal to acquire the data aggregator Plaid is likely to have ripple effects throughout the industry, including reduced tension between banks and fintechs over data sharing.

Plaid may be a more problematic acquisition than Visa made it out to be. But without Visa, those problems were likely to get a lot worse.

The acquisition will vastly expand Visa's platform, giving it nearly Amazon-like influence.

Before Visa agreed to acquire data company Plaid for $5.3 billion, Mastercard had been pulling ahead in the race among the card brands to break beyond reliance on basic processing fees.

Want to level the playing field with big banks and fintechs in the year ahead? Here's where to start.

Open banking and identity services are both still evolving to meet the needs of the new digital economy. These communities will need to connect at the hip to prevent fraud, avoid identity theft and to deter other financial crimes, like money laundering.