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Tech Talk: An innovation network, fintech competition, mobile banking tech, and more!

  • Consumer innovation network
  • Criminals cloning EVM cards
  • BEC fraudsters busted
  • Mobile banking assistant
  • Reclaiming the financial space
  • Bank offers same day deposits
  • Blockchain-powered cross-border payments
  • Enhanced payments testing platform
  • Cashierless shopping concept
  • SoftPOS for mobile devices
  • Stripe moves into lending space
  • Spam, Scams & Breaches
  • Updates, Patches & Alerts
  • and on the lighter side...

Consumer innovation network
Consumer watchdog agency the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has teamed up with multiple state regulators to facilitate financial innovations. The regulators have launched the American Consumer Financial Innovation Network (ACFIN) to provide a platform for federal and state regulators to coordinate shared objectives, promote regulatory certainty for innovators, and keep pace with emerging technologies to ensure they are free from fraud, discrimination, and deceptive practices. CFPB has the details.

Criminals cloning EVM cards
While the newer, more advanced EVM (chip and pin technology) has significantly reduced card fraud across the board, the magnetic stripe still found on some EMV cards is helping criminals manufacture closed EMV cards. Case in point: an organized crime group has stolen more than $1.66 million from German bank Oldenburgische Landesbank (OLB) using cloned Mastercard debit cards, reports ATM Marketplace.

BEC fraudsters busted
A coordinated international multi-agency effort has led to the arrest of 281 individuals, the seizure of nearly $3.7 million, and the disruption and recovery of approximately $118 million in fraudulent wire transfers. Operation reWired, which targeted perpetrators of business email compromise (BEC) schemes, highlights the need for banks and businesses to do their due diligence in verifying wire transfer requests before processing them, reports FBI.gov. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) issued an updated PSA on BECs with the latest statistics involving these crimes and suggestions for training employees to mitigate BEC fraud. FBI.gov has the details.

Mobile banking assistant
Voice-based conversational banking is one of the latest growing technology trends in the financial sector. In partnership with US-based AI startup Clinc, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) has deployed conversational AI and natural language processing to put a virtual assistant into the hands of its mobile banking customers. The OCBC Banking Assistant not only assists the Singapore-based bank's customers with various transactions, it also understands the customers' dialect. ZDNET has the details.

Reclaiming the financial field
The NFL season is underway and football teams across the nation are strategizing the offensive moves they hope will take them all the way to the Super Bowl. Much like football, players entering the financial landscape are fast moving, constantly changing, and goal oriented. With the increase in fintech firms (17 percent have entered the financial market since 2005), existing financial services firms need to up their game to remain relevant and competitive. Fintech Futures has the details and five substantial plays to execute now to increase consumer engagement and start blocking the competition. ATM Marketplace has the details.

Bank offers same day deposits
To compete with fintechs in the payments marketplace, JPMorgan Chase has added an attractive feature to its WePay platform the bank acquired nearly two years ago. The bank is offering free, same-day deposits to its merchant customers who use the platform. The new service will particularly appeal to merchants and small businesses who currently wait one to two business days for deposits to process through Square or Stripe or pay a fee for faster service. CNBC has the details.

Blockchain-powered cross-border payments
In some cases, banks, financial firms, and payment companies are teaming up with fintechs on emerging technologies to facilitate faster and more secure transactions. In addition to other recent moves Mastercard has taken to boost its cross-border and blockchain profile, the global payments provider is partnering with blockchain software provider R3 to develop and pilot a new blockchain-enabled cross-border payments solution for business-to-business (B2B) payments. Banking Dive has the details.

Enhanced payments testing platform
To ensure that the payment systems and applications financial services providers put in place operate efficiently and provide the best possible customer experience, they should test the systems in a controlled environment. Paragon Application Systems, a provider of payment-testing solutions for the financial services industry, has added some key features to Web FASTest, its web-based enterprise payments testing platform. ATM Marketplace has the details.

Cashierless shopping concept
Contactless card payments are changing the way consumers pay for services and shop at brick-and-mortar retailers. Consumers are tapping to pay when they board transit systems, dine out at restaurants, and pick up groceries at the supermarket. In partnership with U.S. fintech firm AiFi and Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn, Dutch financial services company ING is piloting a cashierless store that relies strictly on a contactless bank card to give customers access to the store and pay for their products on the way out. ATM Marketplace has the details.

Mobile POS software
As contactless payments become more popular with consumers, merchants will need to meet the growing demand for processing these payments via cards and mobile devices. Fiserv's First Data unit has teamed up with Visa and Samsung to offer merchants the ability to accept payments on NFC-enabled mobile devices without the need for a mPOS (mobile point-of-sale) dongle or other hardware, reports Finextra.

Stripe moves into lending space
Yet another fintech competitor is making strategic moves into the small business lending space. Last week, San Francisco-based payments platform Stripe launched Stripe Capital to allow merchants and other Stripe customers to apply for short-term loans with quick approval, reports Banking Dive. This week the popular payments provider announced plans to launch a Stripe Corporate Card for small businesses and startups. Tech Crunch has the details.

Spams, Scams and Breaches

Updates, Patches and Alerts...

See what other current hot cyber and technology topics affecting financial institutions BOL users are discussing in the Technology Forum.

And on the lighter side...

This month marks the 60th anniversary of COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) – the first popular language designed to be operating system-agnostic. According to a COBOL consulting company, dubbed COBOL Cowboys, 200 billion lines of COBOL code are still in use today – some of that is running on legacy ATMs. Take a look at the evolution of computer languages over 136 years.

First published on 09/13/2019

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