Merchant

A San Diego-based debt collector has agreed to pay $675,000 in civil penalties and give up $18 million won in court fights against 4,500 consumers, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Friday.

Until last April, the young adviser now at the center of Morgan Stanley's massive client data breach was a sales assistant who spent the majority of his career under the tutelage of one the firm's wealth management teams.

Debt-buying giant Encore Capital Group Inc. agreed Friday to settle claims that it used improper collection strategies in New York, including obtaining judgments against consumers for debts that were too old to collect.

More than 1,000 North Carolina residents have reported receiving collection calls from an electronic message system that claims to be from the Internal Revenue Service.

Traditional merchant acquirers have faced disruption from a number of new entrants in recent years from companies such as Square and its peers. And now, a football team is getting into the game.

Revolving consumer credit, which is mostly made up of credit card loans, fell in November by the largest amount in a year, according to a report Thursday from the Federal Reserve Board.

The company said in a press release Thursday that it redeemed preferred shares worth $76.46 million that were issued under the program to the Treasury Department.

Charlotte, N.C.-area hospitals have started offering multiyear interest-free payment plans to help reduce the number of outstanding bills as consumers pay more out-of-pocket medical costs.

Wirecard, a digital payments company based in Germany, has partnered with Five by Five, a software provider in Croatia, to provide mobile point of sale technology to small businesses.

A phony debt collection scam in Colorado has state regulators warning residents to be aware of callers pretending to be law enforcement or government agency officials.