A bet on gambling payments, a step for open banking and more in banking news this week.

JPMorgan Chase and HSBC are among the banks that have set up shop in virtual worlds or plan to.

The California bank will let customers of a neobank called BayaniPay Wallet use its branches.

Central Pacific Bank is trying hard to appeal to young residents of Hawaii as well as the mainland U.S. and Japan. It's positioning its new digital checking account as a lifestyle brand as much as a financial product.

Citing customers’ increased adoption of digital services over the past two years, banks are shrinking their physical presence, while also renovating the locations they keep — but credit unions are bucking the trend.

Liberty Bank and Texas Capital Bank are among those trying to attract new online-only customers while experimenting with technologies to benefit the institutions overall.

Five Star Bank, which is based in a rural part of New York state, has embraced digital lending, banking-as-a-service, real-time payments, bitcoin and more. “Those that don’t innovate don’t survive,” says Chief Administrative Officer Sean Willett.

Russia reverberations, a rebranding, a resignation and more in banking news this week.

The New York bank recently converted 3 million GM Rewards cardholders to its Marcus app, the next phase of its plans to offer more banking services in unexpected places.

The bank’s unified digital plans include personalization and a customized mobile dashboard encompassing all the business a customer does with BofA.

With its $1.1 billion deal for Technisys, the onetime student-loan refinancer adds a banking-core software arm as it pushes beyond deposits and lending.

The tax preparer has a well-recognized brand and wide reach, but needs tech help for its neobank.

Starling Bank Ltd. is weighing plans for a fresh funding round that could value the U.K. challenger at around 2.5 billion pounds ($3.4 billion), according to people familiar with the matter.

Affirm Holdings, known for its buy now/pay later options, beefed up its app as the firm works toward a crypto offering.

The number of U.S. bank branches dropped by a record 2,927 last year as lenders both large and small sought ways to cut costs and keep pace with a digital transformation sweeping the finance industry.

The tax preparation giant is diversifying its services with a digital bank that it hopes will entice customers with no-fee features, cash back rewards and early access to paychecks.

Google has hired former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg to run its payments division and set a new course for the business after it scrapped a push into banking.

Traditional banks could be forced to add cryptocurrency product offerings in 2022 to compete with fintechs that are taking advantage of blockchain innovations, according to Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of Anchorage.

A group of community banks and two major trade associations have formed a partnership with and invested in the fintech NYDIG to offer the service on the banks’ mobile apps by midyear. The banks say it will help them generate revenue and retain customers interested in cryptocurrency.

The Los Angeles company, set Thursday to complete a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company and raise more than $3 billion in a stock offering, plans to develop new banking and cryptocurrency-related services this year, CEO Jason Wilk says.