Banking & Credit Cards
How banks, credit cards, and payment systems work. Covers products, rates, fees, regulations, and what consumers need to know to navigate the banking system.
Latest in Banking & Credit Cards
Justice says a cross-border scheme stole more than $36 million from 400 mostly elderly Americans
A transnational fraud ring that posed as lawyers stole more than $36 million from more than 400 Americans, most of them elderly, by promising restitution...
August brought 40,277 U.S. foreclosure filings, up 13% year over year
A total of 40,277 U.S. properties had a foreclosure filing in August, up 13% from a year earlier and 1% from July, according to ATTOM’s...
Completed foreclosures rose 42% from a year earlier in August
Lenders completed foreclosures on 5,794 U.S. properties in August, up 42% from a year earlier and 22% from July, according to ATTOM’s August 2026 U.S....
Credit Acceptance borrowers with certain new loans could get a 95% debt off-ramp
Borrowers who take out certain high-risk car loans from Credit Acceptance Corporation starting in December 2025 could have 95% of their debt wiped out if...
Credit Acceptance will erase more than $630 million in auto-loan debt
Credit Acceptance Corporation, one of the country’s largest subprime auto lenders, will forgive more than $630 million in auto-loan debt under a settlement with a...
The Federal Trade Commission is now sending Zelle payments to former AT&T customers who never cashed its check
The Federal Trade Commission says a new payment method is being used for a narrow group of former AT&T customers: Zelle. The people in that...
Federal refund checks stop being good 90 days after they are issued
Missing the 90-day cash-by window on a Federal Trade Commission settlement check can mean losing the money entirely, according to the deadline printed on the...
The consumer bureau is still sending money on 28 enforcement cases
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lists 28 enforcement cases as still active on its payments-by-case tracker, spanning a student-loan servicer, several debt-relief and credit-repair operators,...
The FTC has called a September 29 roundtable on scams aimed at older adults
The Federal Trade Commission has called a public roundtable for September 29, 2026, aimed squarely at the scams that spike every fall around Medicare and...
The Federal Trade Commission uses only five companies to send refunds, and none of them asks for a fee
Five companies handle every refund the Federal Trade Commission sends out on behalf of consumers who lost money to a company the agency has sued,...
Amway agreed to the largest multilevel-marketing settlement the Federal Trade Commission has obtained
A $225 million settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and Amway Corp. is now the largest monetary recovery the agency has obtained against a multilevel...
A new Social Security scam asks to verify employment records rather than threatening arrest
The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General warned on August 31 that a new imposter script is circulating among callers who claim to...
Banks can charge full overdraft fees again after a federal cap fell
Banks that spent 2024 bracing for a $5 federal cap on overdraft fees have instead spent the past year and a half free of any...
The credit-card average interest rate now tops 22% after the Federal Reserve’s rate increase
The average interest rate on a credit card that is actually carrying a balance has climbed to 22.15%, the highest level in recent Federal Reserve...
Five banks and three credit unions failed this year, and every insured deposit moved to a new bank
Five U.S. banks and three federally insured credit unions failed in 2026, and in every one of those eight cases the failed institution’s depositors kept...
A Ponzi manager who spent investors’ millions on private jets drew 11 years and a $31.35 million bill
A federal judge in St. Louis sentenced a Texas investment manager to 11 years in prison this week for running a Ponzi scheme that took...
On Q data-breach customers can file for up to $5,000, but the claim deadline is October 28
On Q Financial, an Arizona-based mortgage lender, has agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over a data breach that exposed customers’...
Bank customers earn almost nothing on savings while credit-card rates sit above 21%
The average U.S. savings account paid just 0.38% annual interest in August 2026, while the average credit card rate charged to accounts actually carrying a...
Americans 65 and older carry rising student-loan debt, and Washington can garnish their benefits
Nearly 9.6 million federal student-loan borrowers were in default as of March 2026, and an estimated 452,000 of them are Social Security recipients whose monthly...
Four people were charged in Texas schemes that drained a 79-year-old’s home-sale money
A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas indicted four people in two related fraud cases connected to unlicensed boarding homes for elderly...