Digital banking

The North Carolina regional closed dozens of branches and cut jobs across the company, directing a chunk of the savings to digital banking initiatives.

The large core banking software vendors are already criticized as large and slow-moving. Consolidations like these are only likely to make them more so.

Its mobile banking app comes with bank accounts, merchant accounts, and instant credit on invoices. Behind it is a network of community banks that will gather the deposits the app brings in.

Its savings, budgeting, spending and goal-setting tools, combined with artificial intelligence to add smart insights and advice, are a good example of how regional banks are trying to distinguish their mobile products from those of bigger banks with larger tech budgets.

Affirm, which for six years has plied its trade as a point-of-sale lender, wants to move deeper into banking by offering a high-rate savings account.