Legal issues and news

A settlement with 46 states resolves allegations that Block's Cash App engaged in deceptive marketing and failed to maintain legally mandated fraud protections. The deal also requires Block to honor an agreement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau made in the final days of the Biden administration.

The proposal calls for banks to make their compliance programs "risk-based" and pledges to emphasize "systemic" flaws with anti-money-laundering programs rather than "isolated" shortcomings.

Oklahoma's Bank7 may acquire New Mexico's Century Bank by the end of the year. The reason: A wealthy Century shareholder is being forced to sell his shares to satisfy a $40 million debt.

A tour of the technology that banking has run on, dating back to Franklin's anti-counterfeit measures and the bank-note bulletin that preceded American Banker.

The Independent Community Bankers of America is lobbying Congress to require federal credit unions to disclose CEO pay, as most other nonprofit organizations must do. The calls follow the discovery of a massive embezzlement scheme led by the CEO of a Mississippi credit union.

Courts in Sweden told Google to pay price comparison website and Klarna subsidiary PriceRunner nearly $2 billion after the court found that Google favored its own price comparison service. PriceRunner initially sought more than $8 billion in damages.

As a subsidiary of Bank of America, Merrill uses a BofA software program to monitor and report suspicious activity. For years, the Securities and Exchange Commission says, that program fell short.

The high-cost lender wants a federal court to vacate a nine-figure judgment, claiming the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau acted in "bad faith" by abandoning a settlement agreement that would have sharply reduced the company's payment.

The Supreme Court found that President Donald Trump did not provide Lisa Cook requisite due process when he sought to remove her from the Fed last year, and for that reason denied the White House's motion to remove her immediately.

A new lawsuit seeking class-action status alleges that FirstBank Puerto Rico knowingly facilitated Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation by failing to enforce basic anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer rules.

Critics of the OCC's broad preemption stance say the OCC is resurrecting an approach Congress curtailed after the financial crisis, setting up another Supreme Court test over the balance between federal banking powers and state consumer protections.

The Omaha bank says AI agents halve the time required to research fraud, sanctions violations and money-laundering alerts.

The Carefull tool integrated into Edward Jones accounts aggregates client accounts and monitors for fraud or mistakes.

More than 20,000 consumers have seen their bank accounts abruptly terminated in recent months. Experts believe financial institutions are responding to the Trump administration's restrictionist immigration policies.

JPMorgan wants a judge to overturn the FINRA arbitration award it was hit with after firing one of its brokers over expenses stemming from a Super Bowl-timed client meeting.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals halted the Trump administration's attempt to fire nearly two-thirds of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's workforce, upholding a March 2025 injunction.

Webster Bank's Patricia Voight, Mitek's Shyam Menon and other panelists reframe identity trust—from a moment of verification to a continuous, multi-signal discipline.

The clarification spells out what banks can share to stop scams. The Bank Policy Institute welcomed it but wants Congress to write the protection into law.

Two industry leaders at American Banker's Digital Banking conference said banks' fraud and identity controls weren't built for software acting as the customer.

Zelle, Western Union, SoFi and others are all launching stablecoins, adding to the thousands of other digital assets that do essentially the same thing as bitcoin.