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American Express Co., bracing for a decline in profit after the loss of a key retail partner, made a series of organizational changes including combining U.S. and international units and said that consumer product head Josh Silverman is leaving the firm.

One look at the industry's C-suite makes it obvious that banks need to mirror demographic shifts far better and faster.

The alliance between JPMorgan Chase and the Merchant Customer Exchange represents more than an olive branch between two industries that have typically been at war over fee revenue — it's a result of a years-long transformation in how Chase approaches its relationships with the retail sector.

New mobile wallets like the Merchant Customer Exchange's CurrentC may find themselves in conflict with other high-tech mobile apps that came to market sooner.

Most mobile wallets clearly favor one industry over another, with banks and retailers often pitted against each other in a battle over payment card fees. JPMorgan Chase just made a stunning move by conceding some of this ground to the benefit of the Merchant Customer Exchange.

SunTrust Banks has promoted its Atlanta market leader to a new position in wholesale banking and has named its first woman executive to lead the Atlanta market.

Bluetooth beacons are gradually appearing in more stores, and some experts predict their use will grow more rapidly once the devices establish a strong link to payments and other vital retail systems.

Starbucks Corp. said JPMorgan Chase & Co. will process transactions previously handled by Square Inc. as the coffee company rolls out terminals that accept chip-based cards.

The combination of location-based marketing and mobile wallets is relatively new territory for merchants and consumers, bringing these two parties so close together that they may start to overlap.

TCF Financial in Wayzata, Minn., has hired R. Patricia Kelly as its managing director of commercial banking. Kelly joins the $20 billion-asset company from Chicago Corp., where she oversaw the investment bank's financial institutions and real estate units.

Great news: Women snagged a handful of C-level titles at big companies this week, including Ellen Alemany, Kim Hammonds and Heather Cox, and Square stands out in Silicon Valley with a leadership team that's 60% women. Bad news: the gender pay gap is growing and there are only two women among Harvard's picks for the top 100 CEOs globally. Also in the news: Blackrock's Cheryl Mills, B of A's Cathy Bessant and ICICI's Chanda Kochhar.

When Square created the market for mobile point of sale devices, Verifone got defensive. Today, with the rollout of its Engage platform, Verifone is going on the offense.

Addressing the desire of small merchants that want a straightforward way to sell online, Square and Ecwid are partnering to synchronize sales and inventory between the physical and digital worlds.

CIT also plans to sell peripheral businesses to simplify its structure, less than three months after the close of its $3.4 billion deal for OneWest Bank.

European mobile point of sale company SumUp has brought its technology across the pond.

Regions Financial in Birmingham, Ala., said its longtime head of operations and technology, Cindy Rogers, will retire at the end of the year.

Stockholm-based Seamless is threading currency exchange into its QR code-based mobile payment platform SEQR.

Foundation Bancorp in Bellevue, Wash., is searching for a new chief executive. The company said in a press release Tuesday that Diane Dewbrey resigned a day earlier "to pursue other interests."

Deutsche Bank has appointed Kim Hammonds to its management board and promoted her to chief operating officer.

From interest rate risk to C-suite and boardroom diversity to succession planning, community bankers need to be acutely tuned in to a combination of global and domestic factors that are changing their world at an unprecedented pace.