With marijuana now legal — at least for medical purposes — in more than half the states, a small but growing number of federally insured banks have allowed pot retailers and other legitimate marijuana-related businesses to open accounts. Still, some 97% of U.S. banks won’t work with these companies over concerns about the regulatory ramifications, which is why a number of U.S. senators are asking the Treasury Department’s financial crimes division to help the marijuana industry — particularly those businesses that service the industry — move away from being purely cash operations. [More]
banking
Make Sure You Destroy That Check After A Mobile Deposit
By 12.14.16
With the convenience of mobile banking services, it’s pretty easy to deposit check by just taking a couple of photos with your phone. But it’s important to remember that you still have to be careful about what happens to that paper check; just ask the Arizona woman who is out $1,500 after using the Bank of America mobile app to deposit a check [More]
Payday Lenders Go To Court In Attempt To Keep Working With Banks
By 11.28.16
The payday lending industry claims that recent regulatory efforts to rein in short-term, high-interest loans have severely restricted their access to traditional banks. Now a trade organization representing the controversial lenders has asked for a federal court to intervene. [More]
Bank Of America Experiences Teller System Outage
By 11.22.16
For a few hours this afternoon Bank of America customers may have had a bit of difficulty obtaining funds from their accounts if they prefer to speak to an actual human and not an ATM. That’s because for a short time, the system used by tellers was down. [More]
More States Legalizing Pot Could Force Feds To Do Something About Bank Access
By 10.31.16
Operating a store selling a product that’s legal in your state but illegal on the federal level creates a unique business challenge: running a business without being allowed to use banks. Yet ballot initiatives on Election Day, just over a week from today, could make recreational or medical cannabis legal for recreational or medical use in 34 states, and for both in populous states like California and Massachusetts. Could this push the feds to do something about the banking situation? [More]
Report: Fake Account Fiasco Could Cost Wells Fargo $4B, Thousands Of Customers
By 10.25.16
As Wells Fargo continues to grapple with the consequences of its potentially decade-long fake account fiasco, we’re beginning to see what the future might hold for the banking giant: a large loss both financially and in its customer base. [More]
The ATM Liability Shift Is Here, And Most Don’t Have Chip Readers
By 10.21.16
Hey, remember the ATM liability shift? You know, how MasterCard’s liability shift means that the operator of any ATMs not equipped with EMV (computer chip) card readers by October of this year would be liable for fraud, and not the credit card network. That deadline was today, and most ATMs in the wild aren’t yet equipped with chip readers. [More]
California Investigating Wells Fargo For Criminal Identity Theft
By 10.20.16
In a piece of heartening consumer justice news, it’s recently become public that the state of California is conducting a criminal investigation against Wells Fargo for identity theft. Earlier this month, the state served a search warrant on the bank, which asks for information about customers with fake accounts, and the identities of the bankers who opened those accounts. [More]
Wells Fargo Employee: I Tried Talking Friends & Family Into Opening Accounts To Meet Sales Quotas
By 9.29.16 — Updated: 9.30.16
Yet another former Wells Fargo employee has come forward to talk about the high-pressure atmosphere created by the bank, where she says there were only two types of employees: those who sold customers on products they didn’t want, and those that were shown the door. [More]
Senators Ask For Investigation Into Possible Wage, Hour Violations By Wells Fargo
By 9.22.16 — Updated: 9.30.16
To say that Wells Fargo has been having a bad few weeks might be an understatement: from being ordered to pay $185 million for the opening and closing of two million unauthorized consumer accounts to being party to federal investigations and being grilled on Capitol Hill. But it doesn’t look like things are going to get any easier for the company, as lawmakers are now urging a probe into whether it violated labor laws. [More]
Wells Fargo Employee: I Was Fired For Reporting Unauthorized Accounts
By 9.21.16 — Updated: 9.30.16
Yesterday, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf boasted to a Senate panel about the company’s ethical backbone, pointing out that the bank had fired 5,300 employees for allegedly opening nearly two million unauthorized deposit accounts. However, one former Fargo staffer says he was given the boot because he tried to alert the bank to his co-workers’ bad behavior.
[More]
Wells Fargo Customers Accuse Bank Of Fraud, Negligence After Employees Open Fake Accounts
By 9.19.16 — Updated: 9.30.16
Now that Wells Fargo has admitted bank employees opened up more than two million unauthorized accounts, it’s no surprise that customers who may have been hit with fees and charges because of these bogus accounts are firing back at the bank with a lawsuit, but they might never get their day in court. [More]
U.S. Bank CEO Warns Employees: Make Fun Of Wells Fargo And You’re Fired
By 9.16.16 — Updated: 9.30.16
It’s been a (deservedly) bad month for Wells Fargo, what with the bank being ordered to pay $185 million in penalties because employees opened millions of bogus accounts, not to mention the ongoing Justice Department investigation. It would seem like a prime time for the competition to pile on the misery and steal away customers, but the CEO of U.S. Bank is demanding his staff not give into that temptation. [More]
Feds Investigating Wells Fargo After Employees Open 2 Million Fake Accounts
By 9.15.16 — Updated: 9.30.16
Financial regulators recently ordered Wells Fargo to pay $185 million to resolve allegations that the bank’s sales quotas and incentives pushed employees to open millions of unauthorized accounts, but that my not be the end of Wells’ troubles, with the U.S. Department of Justice now looking into the matter. [More]
Wells Fargo Ditches Sales Goals After $185M Penalty
By 9.13.16 — Updated: 9.30.16
There’s nothing like being ordered to pay $185 million in refunds and penalties to get a big bank to change some of its business practices. After its employees allegedly created millions of bogus accounts in an effort to meet sales quotas and earn bonuses, Wells Fargo is putting an end to these controversial goals. [More]
Wells Fargo On The Hook For $185 Million For Opening Unauthorized Accounts
By 9.8.16 — Updated: 9.30.16
More than a year after the city of Los Angeles sued Wells Fargo for alleged customer account abuses, including pushing employees into opening unauthorized accounts to make sales quotas, the banking giant has been ordered to pay more than $185 million in refunds and penalties. [More]
Why Are There Still So Many Bank Branches Everywhere? Because You Keep Going.
By 8.22.16
If you live in a certain kind of urban area, you see it all the time: those new mixed-use buildings go up, and on the ground floor of practically every single one there’s a bank branch or two. And if you thought to yourself, “Why are there so freaking many bank branches opening in an era when all the young folk living in those buildings bank by phone?” you’re not alone. But it turns out there’s an easy reason that bank branches keep proliferating: customers are using ’em. [More]
Santander Bank To Pay $10M Fine Over Alleged Illegal Overdraft Practices
By 7.14.16
Santander Bank has agreed to pay $10 million to settle federal regulatory allegations that it illegally charged overdraft fees to customers who didn’t affirmatively opt in to the bank’s overdraft policies.
[More]
