Mobile banking

Many payment companies are hosting hackathons to attract developer talent from outside their own ranks; MasterCard found that its own people are just as eager to bring their ideas to life.

Community Trust in Ruston, La., took the rare step of replacing its hodgepodge legacy core system. The move should cut processing costs in half. In the meantime, the bank's taking a lot of calls from confused customers.

Apple Pay users are fanatically satisfied — to the tune of 98% of in-store users and 93% of in-app users surveyed — making an average of 2.6 weekly in-store purchases and 2.3 weekly in-app purchases, according to the Auriemma Consulting Group.

Tangerine Bank, the former Canadian operation of ING Direct, is creating and testing applications on IBM's Bluemix cloud software environment at a facility in Toronto.

Customers expect mobile banking services — but they're not necessarily impressed by them. Bank marketers should instead emphasize their institutions' problem-solving capabilities and skilled professionals.

Marlin Business Bank has launched a new site to compete with alternative lenders such as OnDeck and Kabbage, which specialize in providing quick and convenient access to small-business credit.

USAA's newest app, Savings Coach, analyzes financial data to recommend small amounts of money to save and invites members to take savings challenges, then moves the money upon the member's approval. The app comes at a time when millennials have a negative savings rate.

Some critics see banks' innovation labs as wasteful, unapplied research, but Wells Fargo has embraced the trend by establishing six such labs, a so-called accelerator program and now an innovation group. The bank's Steve Ellis explains its rationale.

Wells Fargo tapped the head of its wholesale services unit to lead a new research and development division.

JPMorgan Chase is set to launch its new homepage on Sunday, marking its first major overhaul of Chase.com since 2012. The new homepage aims to simplify language and makes the company's news and stories feature more prominent with the hopes of driving customer engagement.

U.S. Bank's new "Your Community" app aims to give consumers the scoop on local happenings, including news and merchant offers. It's the kind of idea that may finally give consumers a reason to share their location information with a bank.

Capital One Financial has purchased another digital design studio as it works to deepen its reach in Silicon Valley.

The new Amex Express Checkout service bears a passing resemblance to rival products like Visa Checkout, MasterPass and PayPal. But that similarity is only skin deep.

First National Bank of South Africa says the offering for its direct-deposit customers should give them one more disincentive to leave, beyond the usual hassles of switching financial institutions.

Community banks that try to serve too broad an array of customers will wind up losing out to larger competitors. They would do better to focus on one or two customer segments and familiarize themselves with those groups' specific habits and needs.

ING recently launched its InsideBusiness platform, which aims to allow corporate clients to do things like manage their global liquidity from anywhere in the world. The product, which will be expanded slowly, is part of the company's push to compete for commercial clients in the U.S.

PayPal has agreed to acquire Xoom for $890 million, as the consumer payments company looks to expand into the international remittances business.

Always-connected workers report feelings of guilt as well as privacy concerns around the use of mobile devices for personal matters at work, and vice versa. Bank CIOs are facing this challenge with software tools and mobile device management policies.

As manufacturers increasingly equip automobiles with Internet access, bankers and technologists are envisioning a day when cars could be used to make payments, inform risk underwriting and deliver targeted offers.

You'll find many disruptors in banking, but startups like Moven aren't among them. In essence, virtual banks simply dress up web storefronts to look like banks but offer one-tenth the services.