Economy

Fifth Third Bancorp and U.S. Bancorp say they will delicately approach expenses in 2015 — or at least until rates rise. They are investing where they must, but pinching where they can, and trying to manage expectations on loan growth.

U.S. banks are cutting off payday lenders' access to a database of account information used to evaluate potential borrowers as regulators seek to rein in abusive practices.

Five Star Bank is the latest financial institution to settle claims that it avoided lending to minorities. More redlining cases can be expected, industry experts say.

While banks have generally been cool to virtual currency, the technology that powers Bitcoin is of considerable interest — enough to draw millions of investment dollars from several traditional financial companies.

United Community Banks in Blairsville, Ga., reported higher quarterly profit because of loan growth and higher fee revenue.

Julian Castro, secretary of housing and urban development, said 2015 will be a year of "housing opportunity" as the economy continues its rebound.

With technology at the forefront of payments, it’s tempting for industry players to become so enamored with the gee-whiz factor of the next new thing that they forget their end users—the consumers who make the payments.

As the trend continues toward “smart terminals” with integrated software for payments and other services, criminals seem likely to step up efforts to get their hands on a new treasure chest of data at the point of sale.

The federal government's recent decisions to lower annual premiums for new borrowers and reduce down payment requirements suggest it has little interest in making room for private capital in the mortgage market.

Across the world, startups are using digital delivery to challenge companies like Western Union and MoneyGram, a battle that in recent months has become increasingly heated.

In a State of the Union address declaring that “the shadow of crisis has passed,” President Obama said he will veto efforts to roll back financial reforms further while he reiterated support for a bill addressing cyber threats.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finalized tweaks to a mortgage disclosure rule set to take effect later this year.

The digital-only offshoot of Customers Bank combines edgier technology — like letting consumers snap photos of their driver's license to open accounts — with a new business model that counts on interchange revenue rather than fees.

BBVA and USAA are among a group of participants in a $75 million investment in the Bitcoin wallet provider Coinbase, an unusual move given the cool posture most financial institutions have taken toward virtual currency.

Even though Apple Pay hasn't yet launched in the U.K., experts in the EMV-compliant nation are eager to bring over Apple's mobile wallet to improve card-not-present security.

A Wall Street lobbying group said President Barack Obama's plan to raise $110 billion over the next decade through a new tax on financial companies could stifle economic growth and make banks less likely to lend.

Industry officials insist the Federal Reserve's extension of a key compliance deadline was meant to aid the implementation process, but critics say it could lead to another effort on Capitol Hill to roll back key chunks of the controversial regulation.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

The ATM is one of the oldest self-service technologies in banking, and mobile is one of the newest. But surprisingly, this odd couple of technologies has a lot of synergy.

Merchant acquirers can learn a lot from their new competitors about how to stand out in a crowd where everybody appears to be the same.