Mobile banking

Financial institutions are often thought of as major consumers of technology, but a pair of recent examples show that more tech is being developed in-house and, once proven feasible, monetizing it. Expect more spin-offs, observers predict.

Raj Date, the consumer bureau's former deputy director, said Thursday regulators need to be flexible, responsive and use discretion when it comes to dealing with financial technology startups.

USAA has partnered with Coinbase to let users view their bitcoin wallet balances, an added financial management tool indicative of a kind of bundling of non-bank financial services it hopes will differentiate it from its competitors.

Reimaging the digital experience for retail customers has been the rage for several years now, but a handful of companies are turning their attention to rethinking the digital experience for small business deposit accounts.

Although millennials are less trusting of financial advisors than older investors, there are still ways for wealth management firms to court younger clients.

Google, Amazon, Apple, PayPal and Intuit have joined forces to promote policies they say will foster greater innovation in financial services.

Whether it's regulation, cyber threats, vendor backlog or just plain inertia, U.S. banks still lag their overseas counterparts when it comes to mobile adoption.

JPMorgan Chase entered the digital wallet wars in announcing Chase Pay, a product that will launch next year. Although mobile payments have been more bark than bite so far, the company says that its product plans to use loyalty programs to lure reluctant consumers.

Customers Bancorp in Wyomissing, Pa., is building an online borrowing experience for its small-business clients.

The bank owners of the clearXchange payments network and the Early Warning risk management service hope that by combining the two programs, they can remain in control of technologies that will become core to mobile commerce.

The widespread adoption of online and mobile banking has largely happened at a time when rates have been near zero. At some point, rates will rise and the value of the experience will be pitted against the value of a yield for depositors. Rate-hoppers will be able to move at an unprecedented speed.

Two new apps, Penny and Sense, highlight customers' most pressing and interesting financial information without making them search for it. The apps, inspired by Google Now, come as banks worldwide try to provide more sophisticated mobile features.

Citigroup has launched a unit in its global consumer bank dedicated to the development of its mobile banking services and promoted Heather Cox to be its CEO.

Regional banks did a much better job of expanding revenue than their megabank counterparts in the third quarter, but they had to spend more to do so and risk angering investors in a tight-margin environment.

Capital One Financial Corp. introduced a tap-to-pay mobile-payments service, becoming the first major U.S. bank to offer such functionality in competition with Google Inc.'s Android Pay.

Bank of America's long effort to become a slimmer, more profitable retail bank could be starting to pay off. In a tough quarter for revenue growth, its consumer banking division gained traction thanks to branch consolidation, investments in mobile banking and other factors.

IDology, an Atlanta provider of fraud-prevention and identity verification, has made an equity investment in the mobile identity authentication provider Payfone.

In a Q&A, Hari Gopalkrishnan, who oversees mobile banking for Bank of America's consumer and wealth management operations, discusses the mobile trends of the past year, including the difference between what its technology is capable of doing and what consumers are willing to adopt.

The central bank originally established a 10-year time horizon for completing upgrades to the nation's aging electronic payment system. But a task force convened by the Fed thinks that's not ambitious enough.

Independence Bancshares in South Carolina last week fired its CEO and gave up its dreams of shaking up the payments world after losing nearly $9 million on the effort. Many details are still unknown, but it looks like a case study for what can go wrong when community banks invest in technology.