Economy

The telco-backed mobile wallet Softcard is at a significant crossroads. Though it once saw the debut of Apple Pay as an opportunity, Apple may actually be edging its rivals out of the market, and Softcard's next move will decide not only its own fate but also the strategies of the banks and merchants that could benefit from its technology.

New York Community Bancorp wants Washington to raise the asset size for systemically important financial institutions, but in the meanwhile its asset sales to stay under the threshold helped to boost profits and its CEO is pursuing possible M&A deals.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday proposed a series of regulatory relief measures for small institutions, especially those in rural areas, to help them provide credit while they try to follow the agency's tough mortgage rules.

MasterCard's Antonio Corro is building a new payments system in Myanmar, a country that's springing to economic life after decades of military turmoil and political unrest.

The government has added further protections to reverse mortgage borrowers' spouses who are not named in the loan agreement, but placed conditions under which they are ineligible for older protections.

Marketplace lenders are seizing on current investor enthusiasm after the December public listing of LendingClub. SoFi and Funding Circle have set new origination targets, and new capital markets deals may help replace bank credit lines for Blue Elephant Capital Management and perhaps others.

Banks partnering with prepaid card providers face the potential of higher deposit insurance fees and other ramifications from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. classifying accounts as "brokered."

Arch Capital Group is repurposing a subsidiary to insure mortgages that are headed for private securitizations. Insuring such loans separately from the unit that works with Fannie and Freddie lets Arch offer more favorable terms to lenders.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council's proposed changes to its process for designating nonbanks as systemically important are being widely praised as helpful and responsive, but many stakeholders say that they do not go far enough.

Apple Pay has secured a dominant position at the point of sale, with two thirds of all U.S. contactless payment volume coming through Apple's new mobile wallet, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. But this may not be the boost to mobile payments that many experts have long predicted.

These days, salespeople expect more technology and flexible compensation from their ISOs, industry sources report.

Hardship marked the end of the year for some of the biggest payments companies, and 2015 will bring even more challenges from rapidly changing technology and nimble startups.

At a hearing Tuesday, GOP lawmakers hammered FHFA Director Mel Watt for four hours over his recent decisions to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy loans with lower downpayments and provide money to two affordable housing trust funds.

Homeowners associations seeking unpaid dues are seizing on a court decision allowing them to foreclose on properties ahead of banks, and the FHFA is litigating to defend Fannie and Freddie mortgages. Private lenders, meanwhile, are trying to keep the problem from spreading to more states.

Western Union is adopting a vastly different use of Apple Pay than what banks and merchants have so far considered.

Peer-to-peer and institution-to-small business loan marketplace Funding Circle launched a new fractional loan marketplace today, the San Francisco company announced.

The Federal Reserve System threw its weight behind a host of standards, goals and timelines yesterday that are likely to shape the quest to build a faster U.S. payment system.

Amazon.com's decision to quietly shut down its digital wallet app last week shows an uncharacteristic caution on the part of the e-commerce giant. Merchants throughout the Web use the company's e-commerce services, but the mobile and digital payments world is considerably more cutthroat.