The most notable quotes from American Banker stories of the previous week. Readers are encouraged to add their own observations in the Comments fields at the bottom of each slide.

Have you ever imagined starting your own bitcoin exchange? Soon, Vancouver-based Bex.io will make that possible by deploying exchange functionality under a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Branch numbers will grow again while the industry’s total branch square footage goes down. More customers will choose their banks based on the availability of a branch they won’t use all that much.

Herbert Allison Jr., the onetime president of Merrill Lynch & Co. who oversaw the U.S. government's bank-bailout program following the financial crisis that led to his former company becoming a unit of Bank of America Corp., has died. He was 69.

Kipochi, an African online service launched this month, is looking for a way to connect the digital currency Bitcoin to M-Pesa, Kenya's widely-used mobile payments system.

There is little proof that a doubling of guarantee fees in the last year by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has brought private investors back into the mortgage market, says the FHFA's inspector general in a new report.

MUNCIE, Ind. – Ball State FCU opened its doors in the L.A. Pittenger Student Center Monday as part of the Village redevelopment.

The $2.8 billion-asset Wilshire would pay about $105 million in cash and stock for the $542 million-asset Saehan, the companies announced Monday.

The "we are all buyers" mentality held by most of Chicago's large community banks changed when Taylor Capital agreed to sell to MB Financial for $680 million. It could signal the beginning of long-awaited consolidation in the Chicago area.

Planned price increases and hints that households are looking for higher yields for their savings suggest that the flood tide of deposits could finally be ebbing.

A uniform mortgage-backed-security product, more risk sharing and help for small banks are some of the housing-finance fixes that the Mortgage Bankers Association urges regulators to make now.

Strong investment-banking profits helped offset more lackluster commercial banking results, illustrating just how much big banks have to lose from lawmakers' latest attempts to rein in the largest banks.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau named a new chief operating officer and chief of staff, among other appointments, following a string of recent departures in its senior level suite.

Normally community banks avoid loan participations with nearby rivals, but a group of Delaware banks decided they had to do so to compete with big banks — and survive.

Capital One Financial (COF) said Monday that delinquencies in its U.S. credit card portfolio rose slightly in June following four straight months of improvements.

A bipartisan commission, in lieu of a director, would encourage internal deliberation and constrain the CFPB’s ability to make politically motivated or ill-informed decisions.

Commerzbank, Germany's second-biggest bank, agreed to sell its U.K. real estate lending unit to Wells Fargo and Lone Star Funds to comply with European Union state-aid rules following its bailout.

HSBC North America has begun a program to help companies participate in the U.S. export boom.

Barclays is in an awkward situation that will ring familiar to bankers in the U.S. The U.K. bank has been terminating relationships with money transmitters, including several that wire funds to Somalia, a ravaged country that relies heavily on remittances from immigrants in the West. The bank says it's uncomfortable with the risk and expense of serving these businesses in light of recent fines levied against big financial institutions for anti-money laundering lapses. But now it's being accused of starting a humanitarian crisis.

For the second consecutive month, lawsuits citing violations of three key collection laws fell, according to data from U.S. district courts.