Mobile banking

Community banks have long said they are the kings of customer service. But a new study shows technology may be the great equalizer for megabanks, as the quality of their mobile apps and online bank sites is prompting customers to say big banks' customer service has improved.

BBVA has spent about $3.6 billion on technology since 2011 to expand online and mobile-banking services and prepare for what its chairman Francisco Gonzalez has described as an existential threat from firms like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

A Google executive has confirmed the company has established Android Pay, a previously rumored platform upon which developers can build payments into applications.

Jack Hartings is a vocal proponent of reduced regulation for small banks. But the CEO of Peoples Bank in Ohio wants Washington to force other industries to share the burden of improving cybersecurity and cleaning up after breaches.

Digit, a startup in San Francisco targeting millennials, has launched a service that crunches checking account data to determine daily amounts to automatically transfer into users' savings accounts. Its debut points to how personal financial management services are growing up to do the work on the consumer's behalf.

Banks would likely not see an immediate effect from the Federal Communications Commission's open Internet plan, but experts say it could prevent future discriminatory moves by carriers that want to compete more in offering financial services.

IBM will assist Citi's Mobile Challenge competition, the two announced Tuesday.

The finance and technology industries should take some of the energy they've poured into mobile payments and put it toward making small-dollar loans more affordable.

Most millennials do almost all of their other business on a portable device, so they want to have this same functionality when buying a home.

Like a number of startups and "neobanks" that have sprouted up to challenge incumbent retail banks, Fidor Bank is positioning itself as a more consumer-friendly, tech-savvy alternative.

Orrstown Bank in Pennsylvania has introduced two-way text messaging between customers and its service agents. It's the latest effort in the banking industry to make communication easier for mobile-first customers.

Banks nationwide are finding ways to make mobile deposit capture available to more people and faster without taking on more fraud risk.

Digital Insight, a company owned by NCR Corporation, has secured an agreement with EyeVerify Inc. to integrate the biometrics company's eye vein recognition technology, called Eyeprint ID, into its mobile banking platforms.

Websites are the old dog compared with mobile, but www.yourbank.com still has some life left in it in some eyes. Here is a sampling of Web features lauded in a recent survey of 16 banks' sites.

Corporate Insight's yearly awards for banks' online services show that financial institutions may have decided to throw all their eggs into the mobile basket to the detriment of their websites -something the firm warns is a mistake.

Apple's mobile wallet has been out for just four months, and already it has shaken up the way mobile payments operate at the point of sale. It has faced pushback from some merchants and banks, but it has also popularized new forms of security and other payment technology.

The bank's most recent ATM update offers something novel: customers can redeem their credit card rewards for cash or deposit them in other accounts at its 12,500 ATMs.

Google Glass, the search giant's eyewear that doubles as a computer, has been discontinued with consumers — for now. Even so, bankers who have experimented with the device say it was time well spent.

The San Antonio financial services provider says 101,000 members have already logged into mobile banking with a spoken phrase or a selfie. It may be a sign that after 50 years, biometric authentication is finally hitting the mainstream.

More than a decade after spearheading the direct banking model of offering high-yield savings accounts exclusively online at ING Direct, Arkadi Kuhlmann is trying to reboot international banking for the smartphone.