Technology

This has been dubbed the "summer of quitting," and three neobanks are aiming to capitalize on the trend by developing apps that provide budgeting, invoicing and tax calculation to meet the specific needs of contract workers.

Apple Inc. is working on a new service that will let consumers pay for any Apple Pay purchase in installments over time, rivaling the buy now/pay later offerings popularized by services from Affirm Holdings Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc.

The two payment providers are teaming up to support real-time payments for contractors globally. The move is designed to capitalize on Marqeta's recent initial public offering.

The card network and telco are designing systems that use 5G to support more payment processes hosted in the cloud rather than on local hardware. The goal is to make services such as autonomous checkout available to small businesses.

Fintech companies with narrow-purpose banking charters pose a safety-and-soundness risk and should be denied access to the payment system and other perks unless they meet the same strict regulatory criteria as traditional financial institutions, trade groups for banks and credit unions told the Federal Reserve.

The fintech, which arranges point-of-sale loans in partnership with merchants, was fined $2.5 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and ordered to refund up to $9 million to consumers who received loans they never applied for.

Novus, a startup whose app helps consumers make environmentally conscious purchases, is using application programming interfaces provided by the two companies to expand quickly. The effort shows how open banking can extend the reach of small companies and create new business lines for larger ones.

The bank is piloting fingerprint-reading cards that work with existing payment terminals. Its goals are to strengthen security for large transactions and to inform future deployments in other markets.

ICBA Bancard will help link community banks to instant payments through a partnership with real-time services hub provider Finzly.

The card issuer, which is offering its customers a chance to purchase non-fungible tokens created from a recent performance by the singer SZA, is betting that the digital art-trading phenomenon will become more mainstream.