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
Thriveworks therapy patients can file a $10 claim over a data breach before July 21
Patients who received therapy through Thriveworks face a tight deadline to file a claim for a fixed payout tied to allegations that the company shared...
The FTC is mailing $3 million in refund checks to 1,821 homeowners caught in a mortgage-relief scam
The Federal Trade Commission is sending refund checks to 1,821 homeowners who lost money to a mortgage-relief operation that falsely promised government-backed help. The payments...
Krispy Kreme will pay data-breach victims $75, or up to $3,500 with proof, if they file by June 22
Krispy Kreme customers whose personal data was exposed in a late-2024 cyber incident face a tight deadline to file claims for payments of $75 without...
Lakeview Loan Servicing will pay home borrowers up to $5,000 over a 2021 data breach, with claims due June 22
Borrowers whose mortgage data was exposed in a 2021 breach at Lakeview Loan Servicing, LLC face a June 22 deadline to file claims worth up...
Parent PLUS borrowers have until June 30 to consolidate and keep access to income-driven repayment
Parents who borrowed federal PLUS loans to help pay for a child’s college education face a hard deadline: they must consolidate those loans into a...
Defaulted student-loan borrowers could see 15% of their paychecks garnished again as collections restart
Millions of borrowers who fell behind on federal student loans face the return of a collection tool that can strip up to 15% from every...
Two older student-loan plans, PAYE and ICR, stop taking new borrowers on July 1
Federal student-loan borrowers who want to enroll in Pay As You Earn or Income-Contingent Repayment are running out of time. The Department of Education set...
A Chinese national was sentenced to 12 years for a $27 million scam that targeted U.S. seniors
Zhao Wang, a Chinese national who orchestrated a $27 million fraud and money laundering operation targeting approximately 2,000 older Americans, was sentenced to 151 months...
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...