Underbanked

As banks start giving work formerly done by humans to artificial intelligence programs, questions about legal and ethical implications arise. The time to impose values on, and set limits for, the technology is now.

As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau prepares to finalize its rule on prepaid cards, the agency must clarify that automated overdraft products – a common reason consumers dump their banks – are not allowed on prepaid accounts.

U.S. Bancorp is the latest big bank to offer an overdraft-free account. Skeptics are questioning how many Americans are benefiting from these products, and want banks to do more to market them.

Possible bad outcomes from the slowdown in bank chartering include less financial access in rural areas and further concentration of industry assets in just a few large banks.

Green Dot profits more than doubled to $8 million in the second quarter as revenues rose slightly and expenses ticked down.

In a perfect world, better financial literacy — along with equipping bankers with ethical standards — would make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau obsolete.

The linchpin of the federal government's payday lending proposal is a credit-reporting system for small-dollar loans created by the private sector, but the kinds of companies that could create it haven't stepped forward.

A less discussed but arguably more important application of the blockchain is to help serve the unbanked masses, including refugees.

Citibank is offering surcharge-free ATM access to the customers of 16 credit unions and minority-owned banks in six cities.

For the second time in six weeks, the online lender Avant is taking steps to reduce the size of its workforce.

Wirecard AG has agreed to buy Citigroup’s institutional prepaid card business, giving Germany-based Wirecard its first market foothold in North America.

Credit scores are useful in predicting the likelihood of whether someone will repay a loan. However, banks and others need to provide customers with another number that more accurately assesses their financial health.

Embattled prepaid card issuer Green Dot has officially split the roles of chairman and chief executive by naming a longtime payments industry executive as its new chairman.

A more nuanced view than the two opposing camps supporting or denigrating Dodd-Frank seeks to make banks profitable while ensuring consumers are protected and benefit from economic growth.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should have looked more closely at states like Colorado that protect consumers from true predatory lenders while still preserving access to credit.

Consumers deserve disclosure and the protections enjoyed by payroll card users, but it is critical that regulations do not put providers out of business.

Steps to improve credit access, evangelize for down payment programs and offer borrower counseling can stop and even reverse the decline in homeownership.

The ultimate approval of the CIT-OneWest merger by regulators represents a giant step backwards for the Community Reinvestment Act.

The British giant is making fintech startups its allies as it builds a virtual bank tailored to the needs "of the people at the bottom of the pyramid."

The fintech lab backed by JPMorgan Chase and the Center for Financial Services Innovation has revealed nine winners of a recent startup competition focused on helping consumers plan for financial shocks.