Compliance

San Francisco Fed President John Williams is not suited to lead the most important of the regional Fed banks, given his inability to detect the phony-accounts problems at Wells Fargo. He also lacks Wall Street experience.

There are still millions of merchants in the U.S. clinging to relic point of sale methods — and they are not easily swayed by fancy new touchscreens and mobile wallets. This means companies such as Verifone must go to greater lengths, just to meet them halfway.

A startup called Spring Labs has launched a blockchain network with the goal of getting lenders and data providers to share data to help verify customers' identity.

Congress has left Washington for a two-week recess, and credit union leaders are being urged to make their case for reg relief while legislators are back at home.

The biggest legacy of the current regulatory relief effort may be the increasing focus on whether organizing banks in supervisory buckets by asset size makes sense. Yet the bill deals with just one of the two big asset thresholds in the law.

Driven by big breaches like the Equifax incident, all stakeholders in card payments will have to demonstrate multifactor authentication, writes Michael Magrath, director of global regulations and standards at VASCO.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions made headlines in January when he tightened federal marijuana enforcement. But the good news for financial institutions looking to service the pot industry is that the rest of the government has responded with a shrug.

Under GDPR, nothing can happen with the European consumer's data unless they explicitly opt in. American consumers tend to ignore the fine print on company statements regarding the potential uses of their data, leading to an environment where companies expect them to opt in by default.

Senate Democrats accused Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and his agency of failing to enforce fair housing laws.

More than a decade ago, bankers fought Walmart tooth and nail as it made forays into banking. But with Amazon making more moves into financial services, the reaction is very different.