How did USAA become the most innovative bank in America? I guess its big-bank competitors have been kind of preoccupied with other matters the past few years. And because USAA serves most of its 5 million banking customers remotely, it stands to profit from pushing the envelope in online/mobile delivery. 

The latest proof that the bank is both innovative and adored? Posting user reviews right in the middle of the homepage, an inventive and unique approach. And with an average score of 4.7 out of 5 for both checking and auto insurance, the reviews serve as a transparent and effective mass endorsement.

The news comes a couple of months after rival Visa acquired another major e-payment company, Cybersource, for a total consideration of approximately $2 billion in cash.

DataCash offers a single, comprehensive interface that provides e-commerce merchants with the ability to process secure payments across the world. The European payment service provider develops and provides outsourced electronic payments solutions, fraud prevention, alternative payment options, back-office reconciliation and solutions for merchants selling via multiple channels. The company also markets a fraud solutions and technology platform.

In 2009, DataCash says it processed more than 240 million transactions for more than 1,400 merchants in a variety of sectors. Last year, DataCash reported revenue of £36.9 million (US$58 million). The company employs 362 people worldwide with operations in London, Dublin, Mannheim and Cape Town.

Here’s how MasterCard president and CEO Ajay Banga pitched the buy:

“E-commerce represents an important part of MasterCard’s growth strategy, and this acquisition will allow us to provide new services to our acquiring customers, as well as drive increased e-commerce penetration in both existing and new markets.

The acquisition of DataCash will expand our already significant e-commerce merchant gateway presence in Asia and Australia to European countries and other high-growth, emerging markets worldwide.”

BankSimple, the potentially disruptive Web-based banking service started by Twitter forefather Alex Payne, wants your input.

The company announced it will be launching an API for use by third-party developers at the same time it releases its first Web- and mobile-accessible banking service to users. But first, BankSimple has created a listserv using Google Groups to get feedback from developers and users.

Cloud data centers are not regulated, and there is no certification specific to providing cloud data services, points out Nico Popp, VP of product development at VeriSign (Mountain View, Calif.), who says identity management and data access are significant factors in cloud security. "You need a trust framework, and the question is then, where do you start," he relates. "We believe the right place to start is access and identity management."

Banks have a unique role in evolving identity management with cloud services, Popp adds. Banks already have extensive experience with access and identity management issues, he explains, so they are uniquely positioned to work with cloud providers.

"Identity [management] is the most acute problem" with external cloud services, Popp continues. "Who has access to my data? We think we'll see identity as the No. 1 issue, and that will lead to two things: certification and identity policies."

PinPoint is a subscription-based alert service that runs on top of online banking. Using Yodlee’s aggregation technology, PinPoint monitors all the user’s card-based transactions, and sends email and text alerts on potentially fraudulent transactions based on a number of factors, one of which is the consumer’s physical location as indicated by the location of their mobile phone. Pricing has not been finalized.

The service competes with aggregated alerts from OFM’s such as Mint.com or Strands. But PinPoint’s main competition is the card issuers themselves. The service holds several potential advantages compared to financial institution services (note 1):

• The addition of the consumer’s location is a huge help in identifying potential fraud and reducing false positives.
• Receiving fraud alerts from a single trusted source with a consistent design and methodology makes it more likely that the consumer will actually pay attention and take action. 
• The service provides contact info and help for reporting fraudulent transactions.
• PinPoint’s entire mission is to identify fraud and help the end-user avoid paying for it; while financial institution’s have similar high-level goals, they also have competing priorities that sometimes get in the way.  

Akbank ilginç bir atak yaparak daha evvel iPhone için çıkarttığı Yatırımcı uygulamasının bu sefer iPad versiyonunu yayınladı. Bu sayede de iPad için uygulama geliştiren ilk finans şirketi oldu. (Diğer sektörlerden de iPad için uygulama geliştirenlerin sayısı çok çok az.)

Wesabe is closing its doors. In an announcement on its site today, Marc Hedlund, the company's CEO said the personal finance site can't take care of its obligations to assistance and security.

Almost two years ago, we wrote a survey of the 10 leading personal finance sites. In the intervening months, three have shut down, one has been folded into another and a fifth, Mint, has been acquired. That's quite a grisly faceplant for a sector in which we could find 10 companies to profile.

Global forces: An introduction | McKinsey

For much of the past year, a team at McKinsey has revisited and retested our assumptions about the key global trends that will define the coming era. We have identified five forces, or crucibles, where the stresses and tensions will be greatest and thus offer the richest opportunities for companies to innovate and change:

• The great rebalancing. The coming decade will be the first in 200 years when emerging-market countries contribute more growth than the developed ones. This growth will not only create a wave of new middle-class consumers but also drive profound innovations in product design, market infrastructure, and value chains.
• The productivity imperative. Developed-world economies will need to generate pronounced gains in productivity to power continued economic growth. The most dramatic innovations in the Western world are likely to be those that accelerate economic productivity.
• The global grid. The global economy is growing ever more connected. Complex flows of capital, goods, information, and people are creating an interlinked network that spans geographies, social groups, and economies in ways that permit large-scale interactions at any moment. This expanding grid is seeding new business models and accelerating the pace of innovation. It also makes destabilizing cycles of volatility more likely.
• Pricing the planet. A collision is shaping up among the rising demand for resources, constrained supplies, and changing social attitudes toward environmental protection. The next decade will see an increased focus on resource productivity, the emergence of substantial clean-tech industries, and regulatory initiatives.
• The market state. The often contradictory demands of driving economic growth and providing the necessary safety nets to maintain social stability have put governments under extraordinary pressure. Globalization applies additional heat: how will distinctly national entities govern in an increasingly globalized world?

Global Forces website