JP Morgan Chase

Manhattan District Attorney and Money Laundering Regulations

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Bank of America, Bank Secrecy Act, JP Morgan Chase, Money Laundering, Wells Fargo

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, together with federal and New York state banking officials, is on the verge of settling serious money laundering charges against the Bank of America Corp. with a reported $25 million fine, making this the second largest money laundering case the long-time DA has settled in three months. In December, the Manhattan DA, the New York State Banking Department, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. settled a similar case with Israel Discount Bank of New York, also for a fine totaling $25 million, including the costs of the investigation.

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Len Heckwolf Moves from Morgan/Chase to Bank of America

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase

Veteran payments executive Len Heckworth is leaving JP Morgan Chase & Co. to head Bank of America’s new payments and receipts product management group, part of BofA’s global treasury services unit. He’s responsible for all U.S. payments and receipts product management and development, and reports to Skip Heaps, global product management executive for global treasury services.

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Credit Card Portfolios: More Pressure, Less Profitability.

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Card Acquiring, Card Issuing, Citigroup, Debit Cards, First Capital, JP Morgan Chase, MasterCard, MBNA, Payment Cards, Strategic Planning, VISA, Wells Fargo

Graph_debit_credit_heqPeople have grown wary of credit cards. They’re paying them off faster; generally, debit cards are edging them out as payment vehicles. And at least for now, home equity loans are increasingly more popular than credit cards among consumers (click on inset for more details and see tables below).

The result? Credit card portfolios are losing profitability, even though net losses and delinquencies are down, and serious questions about the industry’s future are surfacing. So are questions about how wise banks were when they snapped up most of the monoline credit card operations last year. The business model needs an overhaul, says observers, but so far, issuers are just changing the oil. And there may be no way out.

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Data Security Standards Set by Major Financial Institutions

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Security & Privacy, Wells Fargo

A consortium of six major banks and the country’s largest accounting firms said Wednesday that they were setting uniform computer-security standards, designed to ensure that the third-party computer providers they do business with are adequately protecting both their computer systems and the information those financial firms send them.

“This is good news,” says Avivah Litan, vice president and research director of Gartner Inc. “I don’t think it goes far enough, but it’s smart for them [the institutions] to do it in steps, if that’s what they’re doing. But they need to do it beyond the service providers. They need to do it themselves”

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Western Union Spin Off May Do Little for First Data

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Chase Paymentech Solutions, First Capital, First Data, JP Morgan Chase, MBNA, Mergers & Acquisitions, MoneyGram, Payment Cards, Strategic Planning, Synovus, TSYS, Western Union

Last week’s news that First Data Corp. will spin off its Western Union operations to First Data shareholders and create a company worth an estimated $20 billion is probably good news for Western Union. Noting that the parent company will be keeping its card processing, card services, and international business lines, observers were asking what had otherwise changed.

The answer: Nothing. “The bottom line for me is that this doesn’t change the realities, which are that even though they’re going to reconstitute what First Data will be, it doesn’t change the facts that Western Union, while it’s a good business, is facing increasing competition around the world, that the card business is struggling mightily, and that merchant processing is a commoditized business,” says Scott Kessler, who follows First Data for Standard & Poor’s.

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