Merchant

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed lawsuits Monday against two student loan servicers, alleging the unlicensed companies imposed illegal fees on delinquent student loan borrowers and deceptively marketed debt solutions.

As Square's competitors pile on features to win business from the mobile payments pioneer, the company may be seeking to one-up its rivals by adding non-payment services.

Brownsville, Texas is getting close to joining 18 other cities in Texas in passing a law regulating payday and auto title lenders, city officials report.

Citigroup, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, will pay roughly $7 billion in fines and consumer relief to settle an investigation into risky subprime mortgages and resolve government claims that it misled investors about the quality of mortgage-backed bonds sold before the 2008 financial crisis.

In Pennsylvania, Montgomery County officials report they have collected more than $1.2 million in just 10 months in delinquent court fees and fines dating to 1986.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is concerned that some mortgage brokers may be shifting to the "mini-correspondent" lender model under the mistaken belief that identifying themselves as such will automatically exempt them from consumer protection rules affecting broker compensation.

Consumer spending slowed in June, but remained strong in several sectors, according to First Data Corp., a global payment technology and services firm.

There’s a paradox at the heart of mobile payments’ spectacular growth. On a global basis, the use of mobile devices for payments of all kinds is booming: Gartner Group projected worldwide mobile payment transactions for 2013 would total $235.4 billion, an impressive 44% increase over the previous year’s $163.1 billion. Future forecasts for mobile’s growth are equally rosy: Yankee Group now projects that the entire mobile economy will be valued at $3.1 trillion by 2017, with all mobile sectors—devices, commerce, broadband, apps and cloud—contributing to the potential earnings.

Facebook is updating its desktop applications to allow game developers to sell virtual goods from ads posted in the user's news feed or along the page's right-hand column.

The operators of the scheme the falsely promised to help consumers get loans, but instead used personal financial data to take money from bank accounts without consent, have settled FTC charges.