Green Dot’s Temenos cloud deal could enhance consumer ties: Features the partnership enables in Green Dot’s direct bank and its banking as a service (BaaS) business could strengthen its bonds with low- to-moderate-income consumers.

After a leadership change and multiple delays, the tech giant won’t offer co-branded bank accounts through its digital wallet. But its Plan B could be a problem for banking as a service firms.

Customer-friendly services—like switching current accounts and data sharing through open banking—helped almost one in three UK consumers form new banking relationships.

The UK neobank’s banking as a service offering could open up a promising business line—helping nonbanks to offer banking products that interest consumers.

Matt Turner, an industry-hopping head of digital, sees the future of banking as hyper-personalized services embedded in customers’ daily lives.

The incumbent banking giant is teaming up with Simply Business to offer small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) access to insurance coverage. Banks are using partners to provide services that boost customer engagement.

Currencycloud provides API-based foreign exchange banking and payments services and can help Visa strengthen its position in the cross-border payments market.

Lydia teamed up with Cashbee to offer savings accounts next to its payments platform and retail banking services as it bets on cross-selling opportunities.

Judges toss New York’s fintech charter challenge: An appeals court panel overturned a ruling that let the state’s Department of Financial Services challenge the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s special-purpose charter—a credential that would permit tech giants to offer banking services.

U.S. Bank tests hybrid branches to complement digital channels: With digital banking becoming dominant, the bank’s new branches eschew routine banking services and instead dedicate employees to assisting with complex products.

It’s not alone in the race. An influx of new BaaS entrants indicates the emergence of an industry to underpin embedded banking.

OCC pick favors sweeping changes like Fed takeover of accounts: Saule Omarova’s radical proposal has splintered Senate Democratic backing for Biden’s nominee—just as the very nature of banking is also being questioned by market forces.

Service providers are using their existing relationships with small businesses to move into financial services, taking on financial institutions by offering solutions like lending and bank accounts that are powered by partnerships, digital banking developments, and even in-house banks.

Eschewing a primary provider deal in favor of keeping both public and private clouds reduces risk to service quality. But this pricey approach only works for big financial institutions.

Telehealth wasn’t the only healthcare service to benefit from pandemic-induced lockdowns and restrictions in 2020. Retail health clinics—health centers located in retail stores—have grown in popularity as a convenient way to access simple health services.

The pandemic is pushing consumers into digital banking channels, upping pressure on small and midsized banks to deliver value-added services and digital user experiences. They have to find ways of doing so on limited tech budgets to stay competitive.

Consumers’ growing willingness to get their financial services from non-FI providers is spurring consumer brands to embed financial elements in their products and services. But this new form of finance will mean dramatic changes for incumbent and startup FIs.