Mobile technology

Customers are sprinkling symbols into their texts, and it's a challenge for banks to fine-tune systems to support the use of the cartoon code in communications.

The estimated costs of recent digital glitches at BB&T, TD and Wells Fargo are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but contractual and economic realities make it hard for banks to sue vendors for the money or fall back on insurance policies.

A quarter of banks say they’ve experienced a mobile security incident in the past year. Many still lack basic security protections on employees’ devices, according to a study that came out this week.

Some Wells Fargo customers on social media Thursday afternoon expressed frustration with not being able to log in to accounts digitally. The San Francisco bank responded in a tweet acknowledging the problem.

Scores of customers have been unable to use digital channels to access accounts for more than a week, and many have taken to social media to voice their displeasure with TD’s response to the outage. The lesson for other banks: Test new platforms, and test them again, before making them live.