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
The new student loan repayment plan launches July 1 — it caps payments at 10% of income, takes 30 years to forgive, and replaces every IDR plan
On July 1, 2026, a borrower earning $50,000 a year with $35,000 in federal student loans will log into their servicer’s website and find that...
The FBI says bank spoof callers are draining accounts in minutes — one Chase customer lost $40,000 after a call that showed Chase’s real number on caller ID
The phone rang, and the caller ID said Chase. A person identifying themselves as a fraud specialist warned of suspicious activity on the account and...
Scam losses doubled in a single year and 40 million Americans were targeted — AI voice clones now need just 3 seconds of your audio to impersonate you
A mother in Scottsdale, Arizona, picked up the phone and heard her teenage daughter sobbing, pleading for help. The voice was unmistakable. The terror was...
Parent PLUS loan rates climb to 9.07% on July 1 — the cost of borrowing $40,000 to send your kid to college is now $463 a month for 10 years
The federal government is about to charge parents 9.07 percent interest to help send their children to college. That is the fixed rate expected to...
Federal student loan rates jump to 6.52% on July 1 — and the 30-year Treasury at 5% means there’s no relief coming
A college freshman who signs a federal loan promissory note after July 1 will pay 6.52% interest on every dollar borrowed, locked in for the...
The defaulted borrowers aren’t who you’d expect — the average student loan defaulter is 40 years old and was making payments before the pandemic paused collections
When federal student loan collections officially restarted in May 2025, the government was not chasing down recent college dropouts. It was coming for people like...
The new student loan repayment plan launches July 1 — it caps payments at 10% of income, takes 30 years to forgive, and replaces every IDR plan
A borrower who signs a federal Direct Loan promissory note on July 1, 2026, will face a choice that did not exist a month earlier:...
3.6 million student loan borrowers defaulted since October — and the average defaulter is 40 years old and was current on payments before the pandemic
They paid on time for years. Then the system restarted, and millions of them stopped. Since federal student loan payments resumed in October 2023 after...
Parent PLUS loan rates climb to 9.07% on July 1 — the cost of borrowing to send your kid to college just hit its highest point since 2007
A parent borrowing $30,000 this fall to help cover a child’s tuition will owe roughly $382 a month for the next decade and pay about...
Scam losses doubled in a single year and 40 million Americans were targeted — the average victim now loses more than twice what they did in 2025
A grandmother in Ohio wires $8,000 to someone she believes is her grandson, arrested and desperate for bail money. A college student in Texas watches...
Federal student loan rates jump to 6.52% on July 1 — the highest borrowing rate for undergrads in three years
A college freshman enrolling this fall and borrowing the maximum federal Direct Loan will pay a fixed interest rate of 6.52%, the highest undergraduate borrowing...
Credit card delinquencies hit 13.1%, the highest in 16 years — but total balances actually dropped $25 billion last quarter
More than one in every eight credit card accounts at the nation’s largest banks is now at least 90 days past due. That is not...
Student loan delinquencies jumped to 10.3% — the highest since 2020 — and defaulted borrowers are also falling behind on credit cards, auto loans, and mortgages
For more than three years, millions of Americans with federal student loans made no payments at all. The pandemic-era freeze, which began in March 2020...
The FBI says bank spoof callers drained $40,000 from a Chase customer — the scam used Chase’s own phone number on caller ID
The phone rang, and the screen showed Chase Bank’s name and number. The voice on the other end identified herself as a fraud department representative...
Parent PLUS loan rates climb to 9.07% on July 1 — the cost of borrowing to send your kid to college just hit its highest point since 2007
A parent borrowing $30,000 through the federal PLUS loan program for the 2025-2026 school year will pay roughly $382 a month for 10 years and...
Fake EZ-Pass and toll-road texts are the fastest-growing scam in America — imposter fraud losses hit $3.5 billion last year
The message that landed on a New Jersey commuter’s phone last spring looked like any routine toll notice: “Your E-ZPass account has an unpaid balance...
The best high-yield savings account still pays 4.10% APY — and the new Fed chair taking over today hasn’t signaled a single rate cut
Kevin Warsh walked into the Federal Reserve’s Eccles Building on May 14, 2026, as the most hawkish new chair the central bank has had in...
Scam losses doubled in the past year and nearly 40 million Americans were targeted — the average victim now loses more than twice what they did a year ago
When the Federal Trade Commission published its annual fraud report in March 2025, one number jumped off the page: $12.5 billion in consumer losses for...
Fidelity flagged a $15 billion fraud wave targeting Americans’ savings — scammers send 100,000 texts a day and AI voice clones need just 3 seconds of audio
A 54-year-old woman in Arizona picks up the phone and hears her son’s voice, panicked, saying he’s been in a car accident and needs bail...
The new student loan repayment plan launches July 1 — it caps payments at 10% of income and takes 30 years to forgive
Roughly 8 million federal student loan borrowers who were enrolled in the now-defunct SAVE plan are about to land in a new repayment structure they...