A court-imposed deadline for American Express to negotiate a fix to its merchant rules with the Department of Justice is about three weeks away. Odds of a deal are said to be low, heightening uncertainty — and fueling debate — about how the showdown will affect the future of the credit card business.

Plumas Bank in Quincy, Calif., is looking to convert its loan-production office in Reno, Nev., into a full-service branch.

Prosper Marketplace, an online lender for consumer loans, has found a new source of referrals: community banks.

The Bank of England will research whether issuing a digital currency such as Bitcoin would help it achieve its monetary policy, financial stability and regulatory goals.

The Northeast has always been a competitive market for deposit gathering. Loan growth and the potential for rising interests are forcing banks in the region to find new ways to bring in low-cost liquidity.

Federal and state regulators filed lawsuits against two debt collection rings for allegedly using threats and abusive language, including falsely stating that consumers would be arrested. The operations collected more than $45 million in supposed debts, according to the complaints.

Doral Financial suffered another setback as a Puerto Rican court ruled that the company is not entitled to a $230 million refund tied to overpaid taxes.

Problems related to loan servicing dominate the consumer complaints about mortgage companies made to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but an agency official expressed optimism about the industry's response to these grievances.

The Massachusetts senator recently argued that community banks have little need for regulatory relief. But a closer look at recent FDIC data shows that the health of small banks has taken a turn for the worse in the aftermath of Dodd-Frank.

CIT's John Thain and OneWest's James Otting, scheduled to speak today at a public hearing on their $3.4 billion M&A deal, will face complaints from community activists that they owe the public more after receiving substantial government help during the financial crisis.

F&T Financial Services in Porterville, Calif., has agreed to buy Pan American Bank in Los Angeles.

Everyone knows the proverb "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

OceanFirst Financial in Toms River, N.J., has agreed to buy Colonial American Bank in Middletown, N.J.

BB&T has received subpoenas from the Justice Department tied to a probe of the Winston-Salem, N.C., company's FHA lending.

Across the country, community banks are defying the stereotype of small institutions as technological laggards, sometimes introducing useful digital features well ahead of the better-resourced and purportedly savvier big banks.

Small banks don't have the budgets of large-bank competitors, but with nimbleness and creativity they are sometimes first out of the gate with innovative technology, from real-time payments to biometric authentication. We scoured the land for examples of tech-savvy community banks and chose the following 10 standouts.

On the acquisition trail, Minnesota's Frandsen Financial picked up nine legacy imaging systems. A new system and shared database unlocked many years' worth of archived checks and statements.

Getting employees used to using fingerprint scanners was the biggest challenge to Clear Lake Bank's biometrics project.

With a strong financial commitment and a goal of "building cool stuff," the Boston community bank hopes to continue to innovate.

Using Splunk Cloud, Orrstown is trying to go beyond merely monitoring network traffic at a time when cyber threats keep mounting.