Banking

The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web. Today: Bitcoin mining stresses electrical grids; State taxes for cryptocurrency; Facebook payments expand in Africa; A pop song in Japan for cryptocurrency.

The move follows a shareholder proposal filed by Boston-based Arjuna Capital and is the first of its kind by a big U.S. bank.

Apart from a one-time adjustment for deferred taxes, the Dallas company reported strong gains in net interest income and meaningful improvement in all of its key performance ratios.

Despite the growing legality of marijuana sales, banks have largely written off the industry as being too high-risk. Recent remarks by Attorney General Jeff Sessions would seem to reinforce that position.

Fast growth in use of the bank's instance of the person-to-person payments product indicates it could one day rival Venmo.

Weak loan growth, a $3.25 billion litigation accrual and other costs tied to the phony-accounts saga all added up to a messy fourth quarter for the San Francisco bank.

Bankers could see higher costs as cloud computing vendors struggle to protect their systems from the latest hacking vulnerabilities.

The JPMorgan Chase CEO is rejecting arguments that banks are poised to loosen underwriting standards to win more mortgage business. He said what's needed to encourage banks to make more loans to borrowers with spotty credit files are changes to FHA rules and other policy fixes.

Cryptocurrencies continue to dominate much of the news, with a warning on bitcoin taking the top spot and a story about Ripple's partnership with MoneyGram doing well. Housing finance reform, Wells Fargo and the CFPB also featured.

The Maryland credit union will offer business services to the medical cannabis industry.

Executives of large banks told investors and analysts what they wanted to hear Friday when they said they plan to increase returns to shareholders.

The Iowa company was sidelined by a Fed order for 2,155 days. Finally free, Ambank is open to making an acquisition and offering its mortgage origination services to other institutions.

Banks are increasingly investing in technology that will enable them to deliver highly personal and customized communications with customers.

Leonard Stekol, Ridgewood's president, succeeded Peter Boger, who ran the bank for 18 years.

PSCU and the University of South Florida recruited graduate students for a 12-week educational program that examined financial service use cases for Internet of Things devices.

JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo are the first to report; payments company will run pilot to see if digital currency speeds transactions and lowers costs.

The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web. Today: Amazon opens Dash's tech; Hyundai makes a move into car tech; Faster payments advance in the U.S. and Lithuania.

The bank's effective tax rate will drop this year to 19% from 32%. That means that if JPMorgan generates the same pretax profit this year as it did in 2017, earnings will rise by more than $3.5 billion.

Debt transfers, dining rewards and easier security are all ways to enhance relationships with consumers are card options proliferate in a competitive environment, writes Thomas Donaldson, senior credit specialist at CompareCards.

Readers react to the Federal Housing Finance Agency considering changing its credit scoring policy, slam the possibility of enforcing mandatory penalties for data breaches at credit reporting agencies, weigh the possible nomination of a credit union regulator to the CFPB, and more.