Elected officials in Santa Fe and Seattle are considering plans to form municipal banks to promote affordable housing and reach out to the underbanked. Bankers are wary since such institutions could present competition.

Foreclosure filings - default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions - were reported on 119,888 U.S. properties in January, an increase of 5% from the previous month but still down 4% from a year ago, reports RealtyTrac, a company that tracks housing data.

Two new defendants have been named in a Federal Trade Commission case against a phony debt relief and credit repair scheme that allegedly deceived consumers about non-existent federal programs to pay off their bills and fix poor credit.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a lawsuit Wednesday against a Buffalo, N.Y., collection agency accused of impersonating regional government agencies and sheriff’s deputies attempting to collect debts.

American Express will certainly suffer when its 16-year cobranding deal with Costco ends in 2016, but its executives will spend the next year building up the card brand's digital payment products to create enough opportunities to ease the company's short-term pain and guarantee its long-term health.

Digital Insight, a company owned by NCR Corporation, has secured an agreement with EyeVerify Inc. to integrate the biometrics company's eye vein recognition technology, called Eyeprint ID, into its mobile banking platforms.

The Federal Reserve Board has raised several concerns about the interbank fee that is part of an industry group's plan to make funds available to consumers on the same day. It's another speed bump in the road to modernizing the U.S. payment system.

American Express, the biggest U.S. credit-card issuer by customer purchases, said its co-brand and merchant agreements with Costco Wholesale in U.S. stores will end next year.

ApplePie Capital, a new marketplace lender that specializes in lending to franchises, has officially opened for business.

First Green Bancorp in Mount Dora, Fla., has raised nearly $14 million through a private placement.

Citi has formed a digital marketing alliance with online real estate marketplace Zillow in a bid to reach more customers in the financial services company's priority cities, the company announced Feb. 10.

Bank of the Ozarks in Little Rock, Ark., and WesBanco in Wheeling, W.Va., each completed acquisitions this week.

The FDIC welcomed seven new members to a committee on Wednesday that will provide recommendations on policy and regulatory issues affecting community banks.

No one can agree on what the Fed will do with interest rates. In the meantime, the banking industry's more-conservative players are devoting more resources toward hoarding low-cost deposits and purging shorter-term borrowings.

GOP lawmakers on Wednesday harshly criticized the Federal Housing Administration's recent move to lower insurance premiums, saying it violates the law and will be used to entice borrowers into predatory loans.

United Community Banks in Blairsville, Ga., has solidified Lynn Harton's hold as the eventual successor to Chief Executive Jimmy Tallent.

The central bank is floating the concept of using the Internet to facilitate the direct clearing of transactions between financial institutions, which would likely diminish its own role in the U.S. payment system.

Metro Bancorp, which has been fielding calls to sell itself for nearly a year, disclosed that CEO Gary Nalbandian will take a medical leave to undergo bypass surgery. Metro's executive team will be tasked with an ongoing effort to improve performance and remain independent.

An estimated 77 million Americans have a debt in collections, or about 35% of consumers with credit files or data reported to a major credit bureau, according to a joint study, which noted that the positive impact of collections is expected to increase.

U.S. Bancorp in Minneapolis has appointed Amy Hurd as head of its in-store and on-site banking division.