Digital payments

Loan forbearances are wreaking havoc with firms that normally clean up during recessions; the Fed’s latest rescue plan is off to a rocky start as few banks show interest in making the loans.

At a congressional hearing, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell discussed steps to get the flow of coins to financial institutions back to pre-pandemic levels, as well as ways to ease other industry burdens.

Stuart Levey, HSBC’s chief counsel and a former U.S. Treasury undersecretary, will head the cryptocurrency project; lender groups say the demands of those small business loans are not so easy to meet.

As the market deals with the short-term challenge of getting stimulus payments into the hands of citizens, the country has a unique opportunity to put unbanked and underbanked citizens on a long-term path to electronic payment methods, says FIS' Jim Johnson.

The legislation sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, would require banks to offer the accounts so that consumers could easily access cornonavirus relief funds without turning to high-cost check cashers.