Merchant

Suneera Madhani, CEO of the digital acquirer Fattmerchant, tells PaymentsSource how the coronavirus pandemic has affected how her employees go to market with new payments technology — and how making the shift to digital helps both the acquirer and its clients.

Q1 profits expected to drop by nearly 25%, while investment banking revenues could tank much more; many banks have tighter standards than the SBA.

After opening-day fiasco, SBA upgrades lender portal with Amazon assist; West Virginia’s First State Bank closed by regulators; BofA offers emergency loans to borrowers first, freezing out depositors; and more from this week’s most-read stories.

Bank of America, which came under fire for prioritizing applications from existing small-business customers, asked a federal judge in Baltimore to reject a request in a lawsuit to temporarily bar it from employing the practice.

The week-old Paycheck Protection Program will be opened up to sole proprietors and independent contractors on Friday.

Midsize businesses and state and local governments are among the beneficiaries of the central bank's latest $2 trillion effort to mitigate the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Many banks were hitting their limits for lending to small businesses devastated by the coronavirus outbreak. They say the Fed's decisions to help fund additional loans and relax capital requirements will resolve many of their problems.

The maneuver could delay efforts by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to add another $250 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program.

The majority of small businesses faced a financial challenge last year and that was before the pandemic curtailed consumer demand and forced nonessential companies to close.

The mainstream adoption of Bitcoin is getting a boost from credit card giant Visa Inc., which joined startup Fold to offer a card that earns rewards denominated in the cryptocurrency instead of airline miles or cash.