PayThink

Valve Corp., the company that provides the popular PC game platform Steam, disclosed Thursday that it suffered a data breach this month.

The title of Javelin Strategy & Research's blog entry today nearly says it all: "Occupy Oakland deposits $20,000 with … Wells Fargo."

In the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008, an increasingly persistent attack on money market mutual funds is underway. Present and former high government officials, academics, and some editorial writers have joined the fray, each offering their own approach for reengineering the money fund industry.

The branch banking model is outdated, and not just because many still use pneumatic tubes at the drive-through lane.

Banks should adhere to high moral standards by discouraging people from going needlessly into debt. The concept of "fly now, pay later" does not promote consumers’ financial responsibility.

A cyberscam that profited by swapping out Web ads to generate referral revenue also left its victims open to more direct financial fraud.

The Volcker Rule, enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, has lately received a lot of adverse commentary. The complexity of the draft implementing regulation, and the clear indication in the regulators' accompanying questions that they did not know how to make the rule work, has produced a new round of criticism. But that’s only one of the problems this rule creates, and a relatively minor one.

Overdraft elephants are hiding in plain sight in bank and credit union boardrooms. No one admits seeing them. No one talks about them. The less said the better.

There's bad news for those who withdrew funds on Bank Transfer Day to punish the targets of their ire. Most banks don't really need their money — at least not right now.

Apple's iPhone App Store is not as airtight as many believe, according to a researcher who managed to get a malware app through Apple's vetting process as a proof of concept.