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
Card interest rates remain near record highs even as balances dip
Credit card APRs are hovering near record highs just as many households are finally starting to chip away at their balances. The combination signals a...
Credit card balances fell for the first time in years, dropping $25 billion to start 2026
American households paid down credit card debt by $25 billion in the first three months of 2026, snapping a streak of quarterly increases that had...
The FBI’s “phantom hacker” scam uses three fake callers: tech support, then your bank, then the government
Older adults across the United States are losing entire retirement accounts to a scam that deploys not one, but three successive impersonators, each building on...
Americans over 60 lost a record $7.7 billion to scammers last year
Americans over 60 lost approximately $7.7 billion to fraud in 2024, the highest annual total ever recorded for that age group. The FBI logged more...
Credit card balances slipped to start the year but remain $70 billion higher than a year ago
American households entered 2026 carrying less credit card debt than they held at the close of last year, but the relief is relative. Revolving credit...
A Minnesota man drained $1.6 million from an elderly neighbor with dementia and got four years
A Minnesota man who systematically drained $1.6 million from an elderly neighbor living with dementia received a four-year federal prison sentence, a punishment that has...
A retiree handed $25,000 in cash to a fake police officer after scammers gave him a secret code phrase
An 80-year-old retiree in Irvine, California, withdrew $25,000 from his bank, packed the bills into a shoebox wrapped in duct tape, and handed the package...
No real agency will ever tell you to pull out cash and hand it to an “officer” for safekeeping
Scammers posing as federal agents are convincing Americans to withdraw cash, buy gold bars, and hand the assets to couriers who claim to be keeping...
A Washington man stole more than $500,000 from his grandmother, who has dementia
A Washington state man drained more than $500,000 from his grandmother’s accounts while she suffered from dementia, according to criminal filings in King County Superior...
The average U.S. savings account still pays just 0.38%, while top online accounts now pay around 5%
Tens of millions of American savers are earning a fraction of what their money could generate. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation set the national deposit...
2.6 million more borrowers fell back into student-loan default in a single quarter
Roughly 2.6 million federal student-loan borrowers crossed into default between September and December 2025, a single-quarter surge that pushed the total number of defaulted borrowers...
No real government agency will ever tell you to move your money into a Bitcoin ATM
A retiree lost an entire lifetime of savings after scammers posing as government and bank employees directed cash deposits into Bitcoin ATMs and bulk gold...
Ten banks now charge no overdraft fee at all, as the average fee falls to about $27
Checking-account holders at ten U.S. banks now pay nothing when they overdraw their accounts, a shift that has pulled the national average overdraft fee down...
$333 million vanished into Bitcoin ATMs last year, mostly seniors’ savings
Older Americans lost hundreds of millions of dollars through cryptocurrency kiosks last year, fed by a scam playbook that turns corner-store Bitcoin ATMs into one-way...
A retired teacher lost $16,000 to a fake Social Security agent who sent her to a Bitcoin ATM
A retired teacher lost $16,000 after a caller claiming to be a Social Security agent told her that her benefits would be suspended unless she...
A family code word can stop AI voice-cloning scams that fake a grandchild’s emergency call
Americans lost $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, and a growing share of those losses trace back to a simple trick: a phone call...
Borrowers in student-loan default can still get out through rehabilitation or consolidation
Federal student loan borrowers stuck in default have two formal exit routes available to them: rehabilitation and consolidation. The U.S. Department of Education and the...
Top online banks now pay over 4%, more than ten times the average savings account
Savers who keep their money in a typical bank account are earning roughly one-tenth of what top online competitors now offer. The FDIC’s March 2026...
The Education Department paused wage garnishment for defaulted student-loan borrowers
Millions of federal student-loan borrowers who have fallen into default will not see their paychecks or tax refunds seized for the time being. The U.S....
19% credit card rates aren’t dropping after the Fed’s hold this week
Cardholders carrying balances at commercial banks are stuck paying average interest rates near 19 percent after the Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate steady at...