Mobile banking

Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures Management is leading a $185 million funding round for Canada’s Neo Financial Technologies, propelling it to a valuation of more than $1 billion as it plans expansion into mortgages.

Bradley Riss is chief commercial officer at Checkout.com, a firm that acts as a payment gateway, acquirer and processor through a single channel, covering cards, passthrough wallets, stored value wallets and alternative payment options such as point of sale credit. It charges a fee based on processing and card payment costs rather than the percentage+ model that most payment API companies charge. The model is designed to make the service customized to different merchants and serve as a base to offer other merchant products.

The events of 2020 have only served to accelerate a number of potentially disruptive trends among consumers when it comes to banking and financial services — What does the emerging future of consumer and retail banking now look like?

Yale researchers have recommended several consumer banking products and services that could help those with mental health challenges manage their money.

Prosper hopes to do for lines of credit what it did for unsecured personal loans, while BBVA hopes to provide a better experience for customers.

Startups are increasingly expanding into new areas with their bank partners in an effort to broaden their customer base and bring products to market faster.

The bank says it has restored access, but it hasn’t explained how a fire-suppression system at one facility could cause a nationwide outage across all of its channels, or how its system as a whole could have been left so vulnerable to the incident.

The merged bank would set up an innovation and technology center in Charlotte as part of its bid to compete better against the largest institutions and fintech startups.

Customers reported being unable to access online banking, mobile banking or their debit cards.

A new integration between Blend and Ellie Mae seeks to improve the use and accessibility of electronic mortgage documents, the latest in an ongoing industry effort to create a more simplified and consistent borrower experience.

The financial services industry and community reinvestment advocates both praised the Treasury Department’s recommendations for reforming Community Reinvestment Act enforcement.

Some Wells Fargo customers on social media Thursday afternoon expressed frustration with not being able to log in to accounts digitally. The San Francisco bank responded in a tweet acknowledging the problem.

The House Financial Services Committee passed 13 bills (and scrapped a vote on one) Wednesday, including one that would stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from being released by the government and another hailed as helping the underbanked in rural areas.

Tim Welsh has spent his first two months on the job thinking about how to make U.S. Bank as central to consumers’ lives as Amazon, develop new personal financial management services, and expand into new cities.

At CIBC, Aayaz Pira is quickly turning ideas into apps, including its new mortgage one, with the help of its recently formed innovation hub.

The development of mobile mortgage solutions has to strike a delicate balance between self-service and making humans readily available for the stressful process.