The impetus to better understand customers and their personal needs will force banks to rethink their approach to channel management, says Michelle Price.

Huge advancements are being made in contactless payment methods in Asia-Pacific and Europe, with a variety of technologies on trial. But some stumbling blocks remain, reports Wendy Atkins.

The risks attached to the UK’s personal debt crisis can be mitigated by the use of technology that identifies at-risk customers at an early stage, says Kieran Kilmartin, product director at Portrait Software.

Engineering and technological marvels are cropping up all over the world as ambition and demand for ever-more advanced infrastructure grows, writes Silvia Pavoni.

The head of MasterCard Worldwide’s chip centre of excellence talks to Michelle Price about how the company is attempting to combat global online card fraud through its two-factor authentication model.

In the financial markets, there seems to be a repeating pattern of related crises and business collapses every decade or so. Could it be because lessons are not being learned from past mistakes? By Chris Skinner.

The amount of data that financial institutions need to store is constantly increasing, with knock-on effects on data centre capacity, energy use and running costs. Michelle Price reports.

In many parts of the world, the global economy is being driven as much by trade in information, ideas and services,as by trade in physical goods. Organisations that were able to achieve success and predominance through sheer productivity and massive scale are now fewer and far between. Increasingly, it is the ability to think laterally, to operate on an agile basis, to react to global trends quickly and, above all, to innovate that will determine the sustainability of an organisation in future.

Brian Stevenson, head of global transaction services at RBS, tells Charlie Corbett how the bank’s global footprint has received a huge boost from its acquisition of ABN AMRO’s transaction banking business.

Transaction banking has taken on a new vitality as banks starved of traditional sources of revenue by the credit crunch hunt for a steady income stream in a volatile market. Charlie Corbett reports.