Merchant

Sens. Ed Markey and Ron Wyden argue that the Small Business Administration neglected to warn small firms of the risks of merchant cash advances and closed off a key "escape route" from the resulting debts.

The 22nd State Bank in Mobile has been developing its national Always.bank subsidiary over the past year. 22nd State, which was founded in 1917, is eyeing a summertime launch for the online unit.

Banking groups that sued the state of Illinois over its law barring banks from charging interchange fees on taxes and tips cheered an appeals court ruling remanding the law to a lower court and vowed to keep the law going into effect, which is slated for July 1.

The 21st century financial system that digital currency promised is being built, but by banks, not by the bitcoin crowd.

The measure, sent Thursday to the governor's desk, would mark the second state ban on interchange fees and could inform an ongoing bank-led legal challenge to a similar Illinois law.

As gas prices surge, small businesses — particularly in agriculture and transportation — have struggled to keep up. For banks, this has brought a combination of short-term benefits and long-term concerns.

Plaintiffs say Team 313 stole Social Security numbers and IDs. Chime says no data left its systems. None of the suits has its own evidence.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a new version of a small-business lending rule that took 17 years to get over the finish line. Banks are still lobbying for the rule to be repealed.

Plaintiffs allege the banks failed to safeguard names, Social Security numbers and account data after a breach at a vendor neither bank has named.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued an interim final rule Friday to clarify banks' leeway to charge interchange fees, explicitly blocking the applicability of a law passed in Illinois that would ban charging interchange fees on taxes and tips that goes into effect in July.