Retail & Commercial

Elected officials in Santa Fe and Seattle are considering plans to form municipal banks to promote affordable housing and reach out to the underbanked. Bankers are wary since such institutions could present competition.

Foreclosure filings - default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions - were reported on 119,888 U.S. properties in January, an increase of 5% from the previous month but still down 4% from a year ago, reports RealtyTrac, a company that tracks housing data.

Two new defendants have been named in a Federal Trade Commission case against a phony debt relief and credit repair scheme that allegedly deceived consumers about non-existent federal programs to pay off their bills and fix poor credit.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a lawsuit Wednesday against a Buffalo, N.Y., collection agency accused of impersonating regional government agencies and sheriff’s deputies attempting to collect debts.

American Express will certainly suffer when its 16-year cobranding deal with Costco ends in 2016, but its executives will spend the next year building up the card brand's digital payment products to create enough opportunities to ease the company's short-term pain and guarantee its long-term health.

Digital Insight, a company owned by NCR Corporation, has secured an agreement with EyeVerify Inc. to integrate the biometrics company's eye vein recognition technology, called Eyeprint ID, into its mobile banking platforms.

American Express will certainly suffer when its 16-year cobranding deal with Costco ends in 2016, but its executives will spend the next year building up the card brand's digital payment products to create enough opportunities to ease the company's short-term pain and guarantee its long-term health.

The Federal Reserve Board has raised several concerns about the interbank fee that is part of an industry group's plan to make funds available to consumers on the same day. It's another speed bump in the road to modernizing the U.S. payment system.

American Express, the biggest U.S. credit-card issuer by customer purchases, said its co-brand and merchant agreements with Costco Wholesale in U.S. stores will end next year.

American Express Co., the biggest U.S. credit-card issuer by customer purchases, said its co-brand and merchant agreements with Costco Wholesale Corp. in U.S. stores will end next year.