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Apple Inc. scored a victory in the global battle to control the future of mobile payment technology after the Australian competition regulator refused to grant a group of local banks permission to negotiate collectively over the introduction of Apple Pay.

A request by the IRS for user data from a bitcoin exchange highlights simmering tensions between compliance and customer privacy for financial institutions and will test how those demands are balanced in the young field of cryptocurrency.

The FDIC's Quarterly Banking Profile showed positive signs across the board, including increases in net interest and noninterest income, better loan growth and a drop in noncurrent loans. Overall, 60.8% of banks were profitable — allowing the industry to reach its lowest proportion of unprofitable banks since the third quarter of 1997.

John Allison, a contender for President-elect Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary, is a staunch opponent of the Federal Reserve Board, the Basel international accords, the government’s support of the housing finance industry and the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010.

Citigroup mobile-app users can now track the status of deliveries of replacement credit cards.

The Internal Revenue Service's petition for information on Coinbase customers is an overreach that should concern Americans regardless of whether they use bitcoin.

Welcome to the new PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web. Today: Uber's Asian rival ups its payments game; European companies push back against new authentication rules; India's cash crisis leads to protests; PayPal benefits from holiday e-commerce boost.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Differing views: The Wall Street Journal's editorial page had some strong words about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the "rogue" bureau "which has abused the law and whose structure was recently found unconstitutional. By all rights the bureau should be killed," it says, and "Mr. Trump should dismiss [Director Richard] Cordray on his first day as President." "Reform options short of a death sentence could at least restrain some of the bureau's abuses," it adds, if the GOP isn't successful in killing the agency.

The growth of China’s fintech scene is providing a less developed financial market with much-needed updates. But those improvements also serve as a stepping stone to bring Chinese fintech players to Western markets.

Retailers are adding e-commerce services quickly, but older technology systems are making the migration difficult.