Wells Fargo will begin underwriting customers for their “entire credit limit” later this year, Avid Modjtabai, head of payments, virtual solutions and innovation (PVSI) group said during the bank’s investor day today. Currently, customers seeking credit need to apply for individual products– such as loans or credit cards– separately, Modjtabai said. But starting in the second half of this year, the bank will start “showing customers their entire unsecured credit limit with Wells, 100%...

Thanks to the likes of Venmo and (soon) Zelle, real-time, person-to-person payments are now an expectation for consumers. In fact, P2P has become the new social ‘norm,’ Bank of America claims. According to the bank’s Trends in Consumer Mobility Report released today, nearly two in five (36%) adults currently use person-to-person payments, with millennials nearly double that rate at 62%. From the report: For those who do not currently use P2P, 2017 is THE year, as nearly half predict they’ll...

Millennial consumers still prefer third-party money transfer systems, such as PayPal, over card-branded (e.g. Visa Checkout) or device-specific (e.g. Android Pay) mobile wallets. More than half (52%) of millennial consumers (ages 23 to 37) said they use third-party money transfer systems, compared to only 29% who use card-branded digital wallets, and 22% that use device-specific wallets, according to a study by Forrester Consulting, on behalf of American Express, unveiled at Amex Innovation...

Alexa now has about 12,000 skills on its platform (the 10,000 milestone was in March) since opening it up to developers in 2015, according to Ford Harris, senior business development manager at Amazon Alexa. “When we set out to build Alexa, we were looking to bring this Star Trek experience to customers,” Harris said during the Amex Innovation Showcase event yesterday. “And we are still at Day 1, there is a lot of innovation to come, and we are firm believers that voice tech will be the way...

Fintech accelerators have become an integral part of a startup’s lifespan, despite some of the recent, not-so optimistic sentiments. From giants like Techstars and Barclays, to small, community-based programs, accelerators or incubators now cover all the imaginable fintech sectors, promising to give your brand-new company a jump-start. But almost none of those programs guarantee that you’ll exit as the next Venmo, or that you’ll even secure any funding at all. What startups usually end up...