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Intel Corp. offers a personal computer or PC platform for those who want the cream of the crop in artificial intelligence hardware. Intel vPro is a professional-grade business PC platform, built for customers in the commercial sector. The product is aimed at users who want to run AI software at the highest level. The computers built on vPro each have central, graphics and neural processing units. The GPUs run heavy-duty AI, while the relatively new NPU is for battery-efficient, constantly running AI. “You don’t get anything below an Ultra 5 or a 5 Series in a commercial grade system,” Sarah Wieskus, general manager of commercial client sales at Intel Corp. “Period, full stop. Then you have to have the Q series chipset, you have to have Wi-Fi 7. It’s a total package, and it’s the best of the best. And then there’s more security technology in vPro than there is [in] consumer.” “You get that flexibility to use all three engines instead of one at the highest level,” Wieskus said. “It’s really important then that we have software that takes advantage of all three … At Intel, we have 20,000 software developers working with the software ecosystem to make sure they can see all three of these engines and [that] they’re using them.”

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Goode Intelligence, and many other analyst companies, has previously been bullish on the prospects for biometric payment cards believing that a combination of strong consumer demand, consequences of COVID-19 to hygiene control in physical spaces (avoid touching a PIN PAD), and a move towards biometrics being the defacto payment authentication mechanism would lead to high levels of adoption. However, high levels of adoption have not materialized and Goode Intelligence has published more conservative forecasts for this technology in the recently published market analyst and forecast report on biometric payments published in January 2025 and updated in July 2025. For Biometric payment cards to be successful, card issuers need to buy into the idea that biometric payment cards are viable. Biometric payment card viability includes: Meeting stringent payment scheme card certification; Being cost effective and not too expensive (pilot cards are in the region of $20.00-$25.00); Having a reliable, scalable and cost-effective enrolment process; Having biometric sensors that are inexpensive, have low power consumption, meet certification criteria and are accurate. This is not to say that there is zero market for biometric payment cards. There is adoption and we are moving out of the pilot phase into production, albeit on a smaller scale than forecast in the early 2020s. In 2025, the focus on premium segments is a priority for the biometric payment card ecosystem, particularly in developing regions such as Bangladesh where in July, Eastern Bank (EBL) and Mastercard launched a metal biometric payment card using a fingerprint sensor supplied by IDEX Biometrics targeting the banks’ premium segment. These premium users will also have an Apple or Google Payment Wallet and will choose to use the biometric payment card to fit different scenarios and situations. There is also activity in Turkey, India, South America, Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa. In Colombia, banks are turning to biometric payment cards to reduce rampant card fraud in the region, a country where there is low EMV Chip and PIN adoption and a reliance on signatures for authentication.

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Charlotte receives $100000 to boost small businesses in underserved areas as part of a $500000 initiative across five Southeastern cities. A multiyear economic development initiative funded by the Truist Foundation has invested $500,000 to help revitalize business corridors in five Southeastern cities. Living Cities, a collaborative of foundations and financial institutions that raises and invests capital with an aim toward reducing the wealth gap, announced the grants, which were distributed through the Truist Foundation’s Breaking Barriers to Business, or B3, program. The B3 program is part of the foundation’s $22 million philanthropic effort called “Where It Starts.”  Government agencies in Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Memphis and Nashville each received $100,000, which will be used to strengthen specific commercial corridors in those cities and invest directly in small-business owners and entrepreneurs, according to Living Cities. Partnerships with banks such as the one Living Cities developed with Truist are essential, Joe Scantlebury, president and CEO of Living Cities, told American Banker. “We know other institutions can do similar things,” he said.

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The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to approve Rocket Companies’ planned acquisition of Mr. Cooper Group, noting the combined company should not exceed a 20% counterparty risk limit set for the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Rocket announced in March that it would acquire Mr. Cooper — the nation’s largest mortgage servicer — in an all-stock deal valued at $9.4 billion. At the same time, Rocket was also pursuing a $1.75 billion acquisition of real estate brokerage and home search platform Redfin. FHFA staff reviewed the merger of “two of the Enterprises’ largest individual seller-servicer counterparties” and recommended that Fannie and Freddie each maintain strict 20% concentration caps, along with other financial and operational safeguards to protect the GSEs and the broader housing market. “No market participant should have greater than 20% of Fannie or Freddie’s servicing market in order to ensure the safety and soundness of the mortgage market and the overall economy,” the statement reads. The deal would give Rocket a $2.1 trillion servicing portfolio across nearly 10 million customers — roughly one in six U.S. mortgages. As of the second quarter of 2025, Mr. Cooper’s $1.5 trillion servicing book represented 10.4% of the top 25 largest servicers, while Rocket’s $616.7 billion portfolio accounted for 4.25%, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Rocket is also the nation’s third-largest mortgage lender, with $46.8 billion in originations in the first half of 2025 (5.5% market share). Mr. Cooper ranked 10th with $17.7 billion in volume and a 2.1% share. Financially, Rocket swung to a $34 million profit in Q2, compared with a $212 million loss in the prior quarter. The company expects to close the Mr. Cooper deal in Q4 2025, highlighting the expanded servicing portfolio as key to Rocket’s customer recapture strategy. Brian Brown, Rocket’s chief financial officer, told analysts that Rocket remains “active,” particularly for assets with “high recapture potential.”

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Corporate treasury teams are evolving from manual, Excel-based, end-of-day reporting toward real-time, data-driven decision-making.  The future of the office of the chief financial officer (CFO) is about identifying the right inputs, applying intelligent tools and harnessing insights to drive smarter payments, optimize liquidity and elevate treasury’s role across the enterprise. Bank of America’s answer to the problems facing treasury teams? A multi-year investment in what it calls “data intelligence,” a strategy to transform CashPro from a transactional treasury portal into a predictive, insight-driven ecosystem that offers dashboards like payments efficiency, supplier propensity, cross‑border payments and fraud protection. Through client conversations, Bank of America realized it had a unique advantage in solving for treasurers problems: the enormous volume of transaction data already flowing through CashPro every day. The first major milestone came in 2022 with the launch of CashPro Forecasting, a tool designed to quickly model cash flow forecasts and offer customizable views into global cash positions. Adoption was immediate and enthusiastic, and continues to see demand with 24% year-over-year growth in July alone. What surprised the CashPro team was how quickly clients started using Forecasting in unexpected ways. Clients began to build transaction workspaces, search by BAI codes to model out service charges and even analyze payments from specific beneficiaries, all within a user-friendly interface. Some users were producing a forecast, while others were doing a deep dive into granular customizations. The tool’s flexibility proved to be its greatest asset, and it revealed a critical truth about product development in the treasury space: when given the right data tools, clients will find ways to extend their value far beyond the initial design. Once the foundation was set, Bank of America layered on tools to make that data more accessible. One of the simplest yet most effective additions was CashPro Search, a universal search bar that pulls from multiple data sources, allowing clients to find transactions without navigating across multiple modules. The results were immediate and continue to see growth in adoption. This July set a record for monthly searches. The evolution of CashPro’s data capabilities is best summed up in what is called the “Three P’s” framework: personalized, proactive and predictive. This principle of harnessing the right data for an operational edge underpins CashPro Insights, which is described less as a product and more as a philosophy. The system flags key security and payment patterns who clients are paying, how, where funds are going, and whether transactions are protected with appropriate fraud prevention measures.

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The Atlanta-based merchant acquirer as of July has been offering working capital loans to its SMB clients through a private label deal with Liberis, Rob Fairfield, CEO of Liberis, said.  The private-label partnership is an extension of Elavon’s embedded finance capabilities, integrating finance-as-a-service directly into its merchant ecosystem, according to Rob Fairfield, CEO of Liberis.. “It’s designed to remove friction from the funding process, offering pre-approved, fast-disbursing capital through a white-label experience within the Elavon portal,” Liberis’ Fairfield told American Banker in an email. Elavon and Liberis have been partners in the U.K. since 2021, and expanded their partnership to Ireland in 2022 and Poland in 2024. More than 275,000 U.S.-based merchants will have access to capital under the partnership. “Quick Capital allows our merchants to access capital through a simple, streamlined process and solutions that work with their cash flow, not against it – especially when opportunities or challenges come up unexpectedly,” said Jamie Walker, CEO of Elavon, in a statement. The deal comes as more payment firms and merchant acquirers home in on small businesses and offer lending solutions to sweeten the deal. Block’s Square offers small businesses that process payments with the firm working capital loans with repayment terms based on future sales. Stripe also offers SMBs small business loans with fast approvals and similar repayment terms.  Small businesses can apply for the loans directly through the Elavon portal. Liberis underwrites small businesses by using Elavon’s merchant data to pre-populate applications and assess eligibility, with funding decisions based primarily on projected sales and transaction volumes, Liberis’ Fairfield said. Repayments are automatically deducted as a fixed percentage of daily card transactions. “For more complex cases, we have a team of dedicated underwriters who conduct deeper assessments,” Fairfield said. “Where applicable, we also rely on open banking data alongside Elavon’s merchant data to gain a more granular view of a small business’s day-to-day cash flow.”  Funding in the U.S. ranges from $1,000 to $500,000. In the U.K. the average deal size is around 31,000 pounds ($41,800). Offering working capital loans is a differentiator for merchant acquirers even if it falls short of being tablestakes, said Aaron McPherson, principal of AFM Consulting. “Small business is an underserved market, due to the difficulty of scoring and servicing small businesses, so it makes sense to integrate it with merchant processing, where you have access to cash flow data and an existing relationship,” McPherson told American Banker. Most merchant acquirers directly or through partners offer their SMB merchants some form of credit, and have been increasingly offering SMB merchants retail credit for their customers as well, according to Eric Grover, principal at Intrepid Ventures. “That adds enormous value,” Gover told American Banker. “Acquirers have their finger on the pulse of their merchants’ financial health. They see merchants’ sales and trends real time and therefore are in a position to quickly extend credit,” he said. “Even though it’s often pricier than what the merchant could get by shopping banks for a loan, speed and convenience are dispositive. For acquirers, extending credit generates incremental revenue and reduces merchant attrition.”

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Chase Home Lending has resumed offering home equity lines of credit after a five-year absence from the product, the company announced. While parent JPMorgan Chase has participated in HELOC securitizations, it did not originate or service the loans. In April 2020, just as the pandemic entered full swing, Chase paused taking new applications for HELOCs because of the potential for economic turmoil. Approximately two years later, comments from Marianne Lake, co-CEO of JPMorgan’s consumer and community banking unit, at an investor day event indicated the company was looking into offering more HELOCs, adding the bank would tread lightly if it did reenter the business. In the interim since Chase pulled back, alternatives like home equity investment products have entered the market. But the HEI business has generated some controversy, including a Massachusetts lawsuit against Hometap, which alleges its offering is actually a loan. A state judge has rejected Hometap’s motion to dismiss the case. When asked why it is getting back into this now, Chase pointed to home values remaining high. But various sources are now reporting those gains have plateaued. Tuesday’s S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Index release found it rose 1.9% on an annual basis in June, a marked slowing of the pace of growth; at the start of 2024, prices grew by 6.4%. When compared with May, prices grew by just 0.1% on an unadjusted basis. The Federal Housing Finance Agency Home Price Index fell down 0.2% on a seasonally adjusted basis between May and June. It was flat in the second quarter versus the first quarter.  Compared with one year ago, prices rose by 2.9% in the second quarter, according to the FHFA HPI findings. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted HELOC balances have increased during the second quarter by $9 billion to a total of $411 billion. It marks 13 consecutive quarters of increase. The annual increase was $31 billion. Serious delinquencies (90 days or more late on payments) for HELOCs also increased to 115 basis points from 51 basis points in the second quarter of 2024. Chase’s new product is available nationwide, except in Texas. Texas law bars the HELOC product from being offered in the state. During the time it no longer offered HELOCs, Chase did provide cash-out refinance products to borrowers looking to tap their equity, noted Erik Schmitt, digital channel executive at Chase Home Lending. However, Chase has received “increased demand from customers looking for more flexible options to borrow against their home’s equity,” Schmitt said. While this is the formal roll-out, HELOCs have been available to some Chase customers for several months. “Amid rolling the product online HELOCs were initially introduced to branches in all available states except Texas in Spring 2025,” said Schmitt. “Since then, we’ve seen a positive response from customers.” Chase has created a HELOC calculator, where consumers can enter details about their property. “It first assesses the customer’s eligibility by considering factors such as property type and occupancy type,” Schmitt explained. It uses that information to provide real-time rates, the one-time fees and it estimates monthly costs for the borrower.

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When it comes to credit-card spending in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase is already number one. Evidently, that isn’t enough for the banking giant. Not only was Chase the top credit-card issuer in the U.S. by purchase volume in 2024, according to industry tracker the Nilson Report, it is still growing quickly. The bank’s year-over-year credit-card sales volume growth, excluding corporate cards, of over 7% in the second quarter of 2025 topped the roughly 6% U.S. credit-card purchase volume growth across Visa and Mastercard according to company reports. It is growing quickly in lending: The bank’s average outstanding card balances rose about 9% from a year earlier in the second quarter. During its May investor day presentation, the bank said it aimed to take its overall share of outstanding card loans to 20% from about 17%. There are many drivers of all this growth, ranging from Chase’s broad portfolio of card products to its vast branch network. What may be most notable, though, is how heavily it continues to invest in the business. Some of that investment comes in the form of acquisitions, like the travel- and dining-related businesses it has bought in recent years to bolster its offering to rewards-card spenders and capture more of its customers’ spending end-to-end. Those included restaurant review service The Infatuation and luxury travel shop Frosch International Travel. The bank has also been in talks to take over Apple’s credit-card program, The Wall Street Journal has reported. But there are also ongoing investments, such as what it spends to attract new customers, like in the form of sign-up bonuses, and the benefits and value proposition it offers existing ones. In perhaps the most high-profile example, Chase recently refreshed its Sapphire Reserve card and launched the Sapphire brand into small-business cards. The bank overall added about 10 million new card accounts a year from 2022 to 2024. The bank has also maintained a fairly steady revenue rate for cards, even as the scale of the business has grown rapidly. A key measure for the bank’s card business is the net revenue rate. This includes the net interest earned on card loans, as well as fees and other forms of revenue collected via card spending. It takes out certain costs, including rewards and most of what it costs to acquire a new card customer. That rate was 10.22% of average loan balances in the first half of this year and just over 10% for full-year 2024. It was about 10.5% back in full-year 2019. Plus, whenever a card-lending business grows, it is almost by definition a fairly expensive form of growth. Accounting rules require banks to book what could be the lifetime loss on a new loan right away. In addition, other acquisition costs of a customer can also be booked in the first year. Meanwhile, the lifetime revenue—from interest collected and fees generated by the card—comes in over time. However, these metrics don’t give a full measure of profitability. Chase’s huge technology and infrastructure platform can lend the business a high degree of operating efficiency. Also, there is a lot of positive spillover to other parts of the bank. Card users can bring deposits or also get a mortgage. And because of that front-loading of credit costs, the future years of a new cardmember can be relatively more profitable. The bank said at its investor day that the lifetime value per new card account in 2024 has risen about 40% versus 2019. It also said that the return on card accounts acquired from 2022 to 2024 was approximately twice the investment in acquiring those accounts, versus over 1.5 times for 2019 and 2021.

More broadly, the dynamic in credit cards demonstrates what makes Chase such a highly valued company. For one, the market has a high degree of trust in how JPMorgan Chase spends its money. Unlike many lenders, it can afford to be patient with the profitability of investments. The company’s return on tangible  common equity was 21% in the second quarter, well above its “through the cycle” target of 17%. That second-quarter figure was also the highest among the big-six U.S. global megabanks. “They’re in a virtuous cycle with investments that might have been a drag over the last five years but are now hitting their profitability zone,” said Truist Securities analyst John McDonald. “A lot of other banks don’t really have a hall pass from investors to get on that track.” Overall revenue from card services and auto lending at JPMorgan Chase was up 15% in the second quarter, to $6.9 billion. Achieving that kind of growth is, to many investors, probably a better use of capital than buying back shares at the current price, which is about 2.4 times book value, according to FactSet data. The arms race in credit cards may be ever intensifying. JPMorgan has plenty of fuel to keep up the pace.

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Stablecoins are likely to become a foundational payment and settlement layer, not only in crypto markets but also in global commerce, remittances and tokenized financial systems. According to  Goldman Sachs report, stablecoins could likely become a foundational payment and settlement layer, not only in crypto markets but also in global commerce, remittances and tokenized financial systems. For issuers, the economics are straightforward. A stablecoin is minted when a customer delivers dollars to an issuer, who then invests those reserves in safe assets. The issuer collects the interest. With hundreds of billions of dollars in circulation and Treasury yields above 4%, that’s a lucrative model. Circle, now a publicly traded company, disclosed that the bulk of its reserves sit in short-term Treasuries and repos, the report said. Tether, the dominant issuer with roughly $166 billion outstanding, revealed it is among the top 20 Treasury holders worldwide. Traditional networks like Visa and Mastercard already play a role in stablecoin transactions, facilitating settlement at the consumer end, the Goldman Sachs report said. Visa expects to process over $1 billion in stablecoin volume in the 12 to 18 months. The impact of stablecoins on the Treasury market is one of the most consequential but least understood dynamics. Every new stablecoin minted requires equivalent reserves, often in short-term Treasuries. That creates a new structural buyer of government debt, potentially stabilizing demand just as deficits swell. At its core, the stablecoin debate boils down to stability versus fragility. The Goldman Sachs report found that proponents see the GENIUS Act as analogous to the National Bank Act of 1863, which ended the wildcat banking era by standardizing banknotes with Treasury backing. Stablecoins, in this telling, extend the dollar’s reach into a digital, global age.

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Martini.ai, an AI-powered credit intelligence, unveiled the Financial Autonomy Ladder, a six-level framework designed to become an industrywide standard for measuring financial institution evolution from manual workflows to fully autonomous decision-making systems: L0 – Raw Data: No AI involvement. Institutions rely on unstructured, months-old data, spreadsheets, and manual human analysis. Decision-making is slow and often based on outdated information that doesn’t reflect real-time conditions. L1 – Signals: AI produces signals from data; human produces reports and decisions. Systems produce cleaned and summarized data, generating alerts such as credit score changes or covenant breaches. However, all interpretation and decision-making is still manual, limiting responsiveness during stress events. L2 – Reports: AI produces signals, AI produces reports; human makes decisions. AI systems synthesize multiple data sources into insights using knowledge graphs and graph neural networks. martini.ai operates at this level today, delivering real-time, network-based risk analysis that empowers human analysts with machine-scale intelligence. Unlike traditional risk platforms that analyze entities in isolation, martini.ai’s graph-based approach identifies interconnected risks across complex financial networks, enabling institutions to understand systemic vulnerabilities that conventional methods miss. L3 – Decisions: AI produces signals, reports, recommends decisions; human reviews decisions. AI generates specific, actionable recommendations (e.g., “reduce exposure by 15%” or “increase credit line to $2 million”), which are reviewed and executed by humans. This level marks the beginning of semi-autonomous decision-making and creates the first major competitive moats. L4 – Actions: AI makes decisions; human provides oversight for complex cases. AI executes routine credit decisions with human oversight. From covenant monitoring to hedging and portfolio adjustments, the system acts autonomously within programmed boundaries, escalating only edge cases to humans. L5 – Policies: AI makes decisions and strategies. Fully autonomous systems that adapt strategies across economic conditions, rebalancing portfolios and shaping business models in real time. No institution operates at this level today, but the vision represents the future of self-optimizing financial infrastructure. At Level 2, martini.ai’s platform leverages cutting-edge machine learning and graph-based models to understand complex financial interconnections. It provides institutional users with AI-generated research, credit risk signals, and risk momentum across portfolios, capabilities that enable early detection of potential defaults and dynamic scenario modeling. By introducing this framework, martini.ai aims to establish a common language for discussing credit intelligence evolution across the financial services industry. The company believes that standardizing these definitions will accelerate adoption of advanced risk management capabilities and help institutions benchmark their progress.

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