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American Banker won 11 journalism awards during the past week, including its first Grand Neal, the highest of the honors announced at this year's Jesse H. Neal business journalism awards.

Financial startups are becoming important partners for community banks and credit unions, despite lobbying efforts to limit their growth.

Serving the small-business market requires more than just rebranding a plastic card. There are certain functions related to expense tracking, for example, that don't come up in a typical consumer relationship.

David Woodruff was the head of Zia Credit Union in Los Alamos, N.M., before taking the job with APL.

The executive is leaving after two years of coast-to-coast commuting; the interest rate on the loan declines as the borrower achieves technology goals.

The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web. Today: Coinbase and Ripple partner for payment feature; Fingopay will launch vein payments in Manchester; Fintechs ManoMano and Novo draw investors.

Customers are starting to reveal more to private bankers when they use GoTo, the bank's strategy chief Rilla Delorier says.

Volunteer Income Tax Assistance is reportedly bringing an influx of consumers to credit unions this tax season, but those institutions are hamstrung on the extent to which they can turn that opportunity into new business.

The FIS-Worldpay and Fiserv-First Data combos do provide notable scale, but the even-larger companies still won't produce the same pace of growth that younger nimble fintechs enjoy, says Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures.

The gig economy presents many challenges in its reliance on a freelance workforce. Among those is the task of managing corporate spending for workers that don't use a corporate card or expense platform.