Banking

Welcome to the new PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web. Today: Sofi moves closer to payments; Fed staffer's bitcoin mining causes trouble; Liverpool's virtual currency; sunglass payments.

Arkadi Kuhlmann, the founder and CEO of the neobank Zenbanx who pioneered branchless banking at ING Direct, explains why he stopped pursuing a bank charter and made a deal with Social Finance.

The American Bankers Association has added a feature to its national crime database to help banks monitor and analyze ATM skimming.

Bank CEOs have recently raised red flags about the president's protectionist rhetoric, including his proposals to tax imports from China and Mexico. The concerns have arisen as import-export financing is already facing headwinds.

Usama Ashraf, the marketplace lender's new chief financial officer, will oversee finance activities and its capital markets function.

Many CUs offer loan programs to help immigrants afford American citizenship, but the president's controversial executive order has raised plenty of questions about how those programs may be impacted – including whether or not some might see a boost.

Credit unions are finding more and more inventive ways to do the right thing for the communities they serve.

The Louisiana company will enter several markets around Dallas with the $21 million deal

The company continued to reduce its exposure to energy loans during the fourth quarter.

Spark ATM expects the deal will help expand services offered to local banks and retailers in South Africa and other markets in the region.

The acquisition should allow the San Francisco-based online lender SoFi to fulfill a long-standing goal: offering a deposit account to its young, upwardly mobile customers.

So-called branch experts may recommend aggressive sales techniques, but the most successful sales teams talk the least about the bank’s products and services.

Gary Armstrong, former Richmond, Va., market president for Park Sterling, will have a similar role at Bay Banks.

Banks are checking vendors' security practices; Mnuchin appointment to Treasury put on hold as Democrats stall.

Welcome to the new PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web. Today: Coin's shutting down; Swyp moves toward launch; OTI makes headway in Japan; biometric payments at the club in London.

Cambridge Blockchain, a startup that bills its technology as a solution for banks to the competing regulatory imperatives of transparency and privacy, has raised $2 million through a convertible note.

The EMV migration includes support for chip cards and NFC contactless payments, giving banks room to compete in the contactless payments market just in time for wearables to take off.

The newly installed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission voted against 2015 rules that largely rejected the banking industry's entreaties.

The president's executive order reflects a lack of trust in the identity information shared between countries. In theory, blockchains are tailor-made to solve this problem, but current systems may not be up to the task.

Study from the New England Council outlines the impact of the region’s nearly 400 credit unions, as well as that of other financial institutions and service providers.