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Teller Cash Recyclers: Better CX & Safety as Branches Reopen
TCRs eliminate the need to set up a cash drawer at the beginning of a shift as the machine is ready to use. They also reduce the need for tellers to leave the line to restock the cash drawer from the branch vault during their shift. TCR proponents alos like to point to industry reports that indicate tellers with TCR access spend 60-90 minutes more on the teller line daily.
New WatchGuard Firebox T Series Firewalls
WatchGuard announced the release of new Firebox T Series tabletop firewall appliances. WatchGuard’s new T20, T40 and T80 Fireboxes are designed for small, home and midsize office environments. The devices support gateway antivirus, content and URL filtering, antispam, intrusion prevention, application control, cloud sandboxing, endpoint protections and more.
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Power of the Plug-In: Optimizing Core Capabilities
This article states that more FIs are seeking partners that can provide the needed digital services that plug into their existing core, and enable additional capabilities to be added, rather than tackling core system replacements. It goes on to discuss three emerging customization opportunities: 1) teenagers; 2) gig economy workers; and 3) the elderly.
Microsoft Teams: Now Free Version Lets You Create Video Meetings
Users of the free version of Teams, the Microsoft 365 online collaboration platform, can now create video meetings. Teams free users can now create a Teams meeting from their account, rather than only being able to join a meeting created by paying customers.
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ATMIA Announces ATM & Cash Revival Plan
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ATM Industry Association announced its “ATM & Cash Revival Plan” that includes a continuation of its fight to ban cashless stores and its development of ATM hygiene and safety protocols.
Kiosks That Dispense Prepaid Mastercards
XTM, a provider of mobile banking and payment solutions, has signed an agreement with DCBank to provide an instantly activated and loaded prepaid Mastercard through a cash accepting kiosk. The kiosk will allow users to securely insert up to $1,000 in cash through a bill accepter, and in turn an activated and loaded Mastercard is dispensed. The entire transaction is completely automated and takes on average 30 seconds to complete.
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Mobile Banking Service for US Immigrants Launches
Welcome Technologies, an outfit that works to support immigrants to the US, has joined forces with Green Dot to introduce PODERcard, an account and Visa card that aims to help close the banking gap for immigrants. It will first be offered to the Hispanic community, where less than half of households are fully banked. Branded under SABEResPODER, the account has a bilingual interface, access to a free ATM network, no monthly fees or minimums, and educational material.
FBI Warns About Cybercriminals Exploiting Mobile Banking Apps
A recently warning issued by the FBI cautions mobile bankers to watch out for cyberthreats and offers advice on protecting their accounts. To help users protect themselves from phony or compromised apps, the FBI offers numerous tips in this article.
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Aruba AI Platform Streamlines Management and Security
Aruba says that their Edge Services Platform (ESP) can analyze telemetry data and automatically optimize connectivity, find network problems, and secure edge networking. ESP supports zero-trust security principles such as segmentation and policy-based firewal and access control to ensure the identity of a wired or wireless endpoint. It enforces policies applied to those endpoints with an application-aware firewall and adapts to new threats by sharing information with other security platforms and automatically adjusts policies to networked devices.
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20 of the Best Social Media Marketing Tools
Social media marketing has never been easy because it’s not a static field - trends are constantly changing, coming, and going. This article serves up 20 of the best social media marketing toolkit options used by organizations of all shapes and sizes.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
US Regulator Signals Change to Digital Banking Rules
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has called for public feedback on the use of cryptocurrencies ahead of what could be a change in the rules on digital banking. The notice asks for feedback by August 3 on a number of issues related to FinTech innovations, such as digital banking activities not covered by existing regulations; and challenges for FIs resulting from new payments technologies and cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets, distributed ledger technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Online Home Closings via Remote Online Notary
Digital real estate closings have been available for years, but state laws have required that notary processes be done in-person and by submitting paper documents. But that all changed when the COVID-19 pandemic forced brick-and-mortar offices to shutter and business had to go online. This article features an interview with an executive with a Title & Escrow company about remote online notary (RON) services adoption during and after the pandemic.
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Financial Services Branches of the Future: Converging Security and Network Access
FIs are adopting software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WANs) to help simplify the management and operation of the WAN. However, SD-WAN alone does not address fundamental challenges of securing multiple edges, nor does it address the visibility and complexity challenges common at branch locations, which makes it more challenging to address the resulting expanded attack surface. Three of the most critical security challenges facing FIs that use SD-WAN to connect their remote branch offices are outlined in this article.
Versa SASE Play Tackles Remote Workers
Versa became the latest SD-WAN vendor to embrace the secure access service edge (SASE) architecture with a new platform aimed at addressing the challenges faced by remote workers. Versa’s Secure Access supports SD-WAN functionality, including quality of service (QoS) and identify-based policy enforcement, for remote workers without the need for dedicated CPE hardware.
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COVID-19 Crisis Accelerates Rise of Virtual Call Centers
The pandemic has accelerated the virtualized call center, which had been a growing trend facilitated by the cloud, crowdsourcing and the gig economy. Thirty-five percent of the customer experience (CX) workforce will WFH by 2023, up from 5 percent in 2017, according to Gartner, which cites changes in labor practices and business continuity planning as chief factors motivating the trend.
Chatbots to the Rescue: How Conversational AI Will Save Call Centers
After being overhyped in their early days, chatbots, now powered by artificial intelligence, have reemerged in a new role, spurred by high demands on call center personnel during the pandemic. The author is convinced that intelligent bots are within reach of many more FIs thanks to cloud-based platforms. Several chatbot vendors now offer pre-packaged bots with data already built in that are tested and trained for a specific industry vocabulary and domain terms.
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