Latest banking news, Nov. 18, 2022

Visa showcasing new tech at the World Cup

Gabriela Maj/Bloomberg

Visa often uses global sporting events to demonstrate new payment products, and it has several deployments scheduled for the Fifa World Cup, which starts Nov. 20 in Qatar. The card network will offer "face payments," which allow consumers to authenticate themselves by "showing their face" at scanners deployed in some local stores. Other features include the ability to scan a QR code to instantly receive a prepaid card with animation of the tournament's mascot. Visa has additionally deployed more than 5,300 contactless payment terminals in and around the venues and is supporting tap to pay technology for taxis, enabling drivers to accept fares on their smartphones without having to use attached hardware. — John Adams

Regions Bank to pay for employees' college tuition

Gary Tramontina

Employees at Regions Bank will be able to attend classes at more than 15 schools and choose from more than 70 degree programs through the bank's recent partnership with Guild Education. Associates are also eligible for reimbursements for expenses including textbooks and course fees. Before the partnership with Guild, Regions, of Birmingham, Alabama, offered a program that reimbursed employees for tuition in certain areas of study. That benefit required employees to wait 90 days after joining the bank and to receive manager approval. — Orla McCaffrey

FTX collapse shakes Wall Street’s conviction in Coinbase

Bloomberg News

Just last year, Wall Street banks were helping shepherd Coinbase Global into the public market as one of the hottest new stocks. Now, after a collapse in its share price — and pretty much everything else related to crypto — analysts are losing faith. Bank of America became the latest firm to cut its rating on the cryptocurrency exchange, downgrading it to neutral from buy on Friday, citing concern about the broader fallout from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX exchange. The move leaves Coinbase with 14 buy-equivalent analyst recommendations, its lowest number since August 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. "Coinbase likely faces a number of new headwinds over the near/medium-term due to the recent collapse of rival crypto exchange FTX," Bank of America analyst Jason Kupferberg wrote in a note to clients. — Bloomberg News

Truist expands its digital investing tools

Truist Financial is fleshing out its array of digital investment products. On November 15 the Charlotte, North Carolina, bank announced Truist Trade, a self-directed investing feature that lets customers open brokerage accounts, Roth IRAs or traditional IRAs and conduct online trading. There is no account minimum and no commissions to trade stocks, ETFs and mutual funds. Truist Trade follows the debut of Truist Invest, a robo adviser, and Truist Invest Pro, which layers human advice on top of the robo service, earlier this year. "Many investors want to construct and manage their portfolio on their terms and in ways that are convenient to them," Kacy Howard, senior vice president of digital investing at Truist Wealth, said in a press release. — Miriam Cross

Barclays veteran Jason Whiting to join Mercury Financial as CFO

Jason Alden/Bloomberg

Varde Partners-backed Mercury Financial, a financial-technology company focused on providing credit to "near-prime" borrowers, hired former Barclays executive Jason Whiting as chief financial officer. Whiting was most recently Barclays' head of strategy for the Americas, and before that spent more than two decades in investment banking at both Barclays and Lehman Brothers, where he held roles including head of banks and specialty finance. He starts at Mercury in December and succeeds Steve Carp, who will take on a senior strategic planning role. "Bringing Jason on board will set us up for the next stage of our corporate development," James Peterson, chief executive of Wilmington, Delaware-based Mercury Financial, said in a statement. Founded in 2013, Mercury — formerly known as CreditShop — is focused on financial inclusion and said it provides its customers more than $4.7 billion in credit lines. — Gillian Tan, Bloomberg News

Crypto payments gain a small foothold

Adobe Stock

Crypto payments gain a small foothold
A market for cryptocurrency payments has been slow to develop, but there are some cities where a small number of merchants to accept crypto. Six percent of merchants in New York directly accept crypto, as do 5% in both San Jose and Los Angeles according to Secure Data Recovery, which analyzed data from Yelp. The study found the national average is 2%. Crypto payments still lag overall digital payments by a large margin. Denver and Atlanta have the highest percentage of businesses that accept electronic payments at 97%, according to SDR. Phoenix, Seattle and Las Vegas are among there cities where 96% of the merchants accept electronic payments. — John Adams

Novogratz’s Galaxy has no exposure to Genesis lending, Gemini’s Earn program

Key Speakers At The Bloomberg Invest New York Summit

Michael Novogratz.

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd., the crypto financial services firm founded by billionaire Michael Novogratz, has no exposure to Genesis's lending business and Gemini Trust Co.'s Earn program, it said in a statement. "Galaxy continues to manage risk prudently and remains well positioned to help clients navigate the current market environment," a spokesman for the firm said. The fallout from the rapid collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX is spreading across the crypto world. Genesis is suspending redemptions and new loan originations at its lending business after the unit faced withdrawal requests that exceeded current liquidity. Gemini Trust, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, subsequently announced its yield product for retail investors will also halt redemptions as Genesis was a key partner in the program. Galaxy earlier disclosed $76.8 million of exposure to FTX.com. — Sonali Basak, Bloomberg News

Plaid names executive to lead payments

John Anderson.

The data aggregator Plaid has hired John Anderson, a Facebook veteran, as head of payments. In the newly created role, Anderson will focus on enhancing Plaid technology to streamline and speed up bank payments along with expanding the use of Signal, the machine learning-based risk management engine the San Francisco company rolled out this week after several months of testing. Anderson spent a decade at Facebook (now Meta), rising to head of product for the company's Oculus virtual reality service. Before that he was an executive at the prepaid card issuer InComm. — Kate Fitzgerald

Santander recruits Huntington exec to lead new health care financing business

A sign hangs outside a Banco Santander bank branch.

Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Santander Bank is expanding into health care equipment financing and has hired John Pack, formerly of Huntington Bancshares, as market director of the new business. Pack, who was the health care finance business development director at Huntington, will report to Peter LaMariana, managing director of Santander's commercial equipment and vehicle finance division, Santander said. The new business will provide loans for medical technology and equipment to hospitals and health systems, outpatient clinics and specialized providers. Pack will be based in Santander's Melville, New York, office, the Boston-based company said. — Allissa Kline