EMEA

Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank ended talks on a historic tie-up, throwing the future of the lenders into question after a series of failed turnaround plans.

With Wirecard's value tumbling since a Financial Times report two months ago alleging an accounting scandal in its Asian operations — and a followup Wednesday reporting that half of its revenue comes from "three opaque partner companies" — the German payments processor received a lift from a €900 million ($1 billion U.S.) investment from Japan's SoftBank.

NatWest has started a three-month testing period of a payment card using biometric fingerprint for authorization with 200 customers, saying it is the first such card issued by a U.K. bank.

Silicon Valley, New York, London and several of China’s largest cities are the world’s leading fintech hubs, but many other locales are gunning for their crown.

The British startup OakNorth sees U.S. community and regional banks as good prospects for its lending technology.

CEO Kessell Stelling said he thinks about Synovus' depressed stock price daily, even though his team is ahead of schedule cutting costs from a deal that closed in January.

The cold, hard truth of bank mergers is that rivals often steal top producers and convince customers the bigger bank won’t care about them anymore. The CEOs of the merging banks explain their retention efforts.

Tens of millions of dollars of M&A costs and a decline in mortgage activity offset higher loan income in the first quarter at the two banks, which also offered a timeline for their rebranding and shareholder votes.

Stripe has updated its products and made an acquisition to prep for new security standards it says will impact more than 300 million people, potentially giving Stripe the same kind of influence over European merchant technology that it enjoys in the U.S.

Facebook has informed users of its P2P Messenger money transfer option in the U.K. and France that the service will no longer be available as of June 15.