Merchant

Over the past year, threats of steep downgrades have chilled secondary investor demand for federally guaranteed student loans, but two recent securitizations suggest that the market is beginning to thaw.

U.S. Bancorp said Friday that it has agreed to sell its majority stake in a Brazilian technology division of its Elavon payments processing subsidiary.

First Data Corp., the payments processor that went public last year, halved its losses in the first quarter as revenue increased.

The Department of Education wants to make student loan payments easier through the launch of a single Web portal for federal student loan borrowers.

Growth opportunities for e-commerce companies looking to go global in the next few years are huge, but many are daunted by the complexity of different online payment approaches used around the world, say international e-commerce payment experts.

The breach experienced by Mossack Fonseca did more than expose sensitive tax documents for global figures in politics and business. It's also a warning sign for any company that manages large amounts of financial and transaction data.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected on May 5 to release a proposal that would allow consumers to ban together in class action lawsuits even if there is an arbitration agreement.

The Coalition to Improve Credit Education, a group that will focus on policy issues involving helping consumers understand how they can improve their credit reports and scores, launched this week with the support of more than 20 community development, financial literacy and minority leadership organizations.

MasterCard will vault itself deep into the faster payments landscape and position itself better to compete with Visa in the U.K. if a £1 billion acquisition of VocaLink unfolds as reported on a U.K. news site.

Illinois, California and New York are all taking initial steps to try to crack down on borrower abuses in the fast-growing digital lending marketplace. The states are facing pressure to intervene because federal agencies have yet to take decisive action.