Merchant

Mortgage lenders impose steep pricing adjustments for cash-out refinancing; bankers fear massive borrower fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program; some worry the coronavirus is giving banks an excuse to spy on employees; and more from this week's most-read stories.

When Fiserv purchased First Data in 2019, it was part of an industrywide push to combine bank and merchant technology under one roof. A year later, a key piece of First Data’s technology — and its top executive — have become Fiserv’s path through the coronavirus crisis.

A mix of consumer debt and economic anxiety is shining a light on firms that offer alternatives to revolving credit. This, in turn, creates a chance to further tie financing directly to checkout.

The Independent Community Bankers of America accused the National Credit Union Administration of using the coronavirus outbreak to usher in additional changes without the normal amount of scrutiny.

JetBlue Airways Corp. sold loyalty points to Barclays Plc for $150 million, making the carrier among the first in the U.S. to use the method to raise cash as the coronavirus pandemic all but extinguishes demand for travel.

The SBA's long-standing Economic Injury Disaster Loan program has been so overwhelmed with applications that the agency has capped loan sizes; ECB finding few takers for a program in which it pays banks to make business loans.

Up to 12% of loans under the $660 billion small-business rescue program could be tied to misleading or completely phony applications, fueling concerns about lenders' potential liability.

When the coronavirus pandemic began, Square pushed hard to get a bigger share of merchants' online sales and consumers' stimulus spending — and even received its long-desired bank license — but found that this wasn't enough to offset the effects of the crisis.

Stuart Levey, HSBC’s chief counsel and a former U.S. Treasury undersecretary, will head the cryptocurrency project; lender groups say the demands of those small business loans are not so easy to meet.

The businesses that are open now are providing clues for payment hardware makers on how the retail landscape will look once the pandemic clears.