“If we were building a financial system from scratch today, we’d do it on a digital platform,” Bill Gates once said in an address on behalf of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion. That’s not possible, of course (as Gates acknowledges), but what is possible is launching...
Online lending marketplace Prosper has struck a deal with more than 160 community banks to offer its services to the banks’ borrowers — and to widen the banks’ access to capital for the customers’ borrowing needs. The deal is with Western Independent Bankers, a consortium...
At a time when more and more U.S. consumers have credit histories that are thin or damaged, banks are turning to alternate ways of deciding the creditworthiness of potential borrowers — including the scoring systems of alternative lenders, according to American Banker. For example, MUFG...
Citigroup is in the final stages of a deal to sell its OneMain consumer finance unit to subprime lender Springleaf for more than $4 billion, Reuters reported on Friday (Feb. 20). The deal, if it goes through, would finally let Citi shed the storefront lender,...
Santander Bank will relax its standards for approving new checking and savings accounts under a deal announced on Friday (Feb. 20) with New York’s attorney general. The change, which will be in effect by the end of September for Santander nationwide, is designed to prevent...
The U.S. Postal Service should be doing a better job of serving e-commerce retailers and customers, according to the postal workers union — and the union is making that a bargaining issue in its first contract negotiations since 2010. The American Postal Workers Union (APWU)...
Mobile payments in sub-Saharan Africa will generate $1.5 billion in fees for mobile-money providers by 2019, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group. The growth comes from a combination of a largely unbanked population and high mobile phone penetration. That has turned the...
A partnership between Lending Club Corp. and a consortium of small U.S. banks is expected to be announced later this morning (February 9) in a joint effort to reverse a trend where banks have the market nearly cornered when it comes to making loans to...
Citibank has reached an agreement with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to change its screening processes for checking and savings accounts to be more forgiving of customers’ histories, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (Jan. 28). Under the previous arrangement, Schneiderman’s office said, low-income...
