Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) general counsel indicated late Friday that it will petition a U.S. District Court in Kentucky on May 30 to have the rule rescinded. The action took place as part of a status report from the bureau in its defense regarding a lawsuit filed against it and acting Chairman Russell Vought by several banks and the Bank Policy Institute (BPI). BPI and co-plaintiffs argued that the CFPB lacks the authority to mandate free, comprehensive data-sharing and that the rule risks undermining safer, emerging private-sector open banking efforts. They also raised concerns about the rule’s potential to increase fraud and scams, fail to hold third parties accountable, and allow third parties to profit from systems built by banks. “After reviewing the rule and considering the issues that this case presents, Bureau leadership has determined that the rule is unlawful and should be set aside,” the CFPB stated in a court document released late Friday. “To that end defendants intend to file a motion for summary judgment by May 30th, 2025, the date that this court had set for plaintiffs in its March 27th order.” As has been the case with the bureau’s recent announcements, including the recession of the BNPL/Credit Card rule, details were scarce, and reactions muted due to the holiday weekend. The industry will now spend the week identifying and scenario planning for life without the rule, which was enacted in October 2024 and went into phased enforcement in January.
U.S. Bank to be official banking and wealth management partner of lacrosse leagues- halftime storytelling series spotlights individuals overcoming adversity, in-game feature providing access to mic’d-up players
The Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) and Women’s Lacrosse League (WLL) announced today a multi-year partnership with U.S. Bank, establishing it as the Official Banking and Wealth Management Partner of both leagues. The partnership, which begins with the 2025 season launching May 30, represents a strategic investment in the growth of professional lacrosse. “We’re excited to partner with the leagues and athletes growing the game of lacrosse and connecting with its 48 million fans across the country,” said Michael Lacorazza, chief marketing officer for U.S. Bank. “This is more than a sponsorship—it’s a commitment to the people and passion driving the game forward. We’re confident that by showing up with purpose, we’ll deliver a meaningful impact—not just for our brand, but for the communities and people that make this sport so special.” To bring that commitment to life, U.S. Bank will activate a series of creative and purpose-driven fan experiences throughout the season:
PLL Play– Through investment in PLL Play, U.S. Bank will support grassroots development by expanding access to youth lacrosse nationwide, acknowledging research showing the strong link between participation in the sport and academic achievement, personal development and long-term wealth generation.
Champions: Power of Us– A powerful halftime storytelling series spotlighting individuals who not only overcome significant adversity but also lean on – and give back to – the teams around them. By showcasing the collective strength that emerges when neighbors, teammates and partners unite, the series underscores the bank’s campaign of the “Power of Us” and how success is rarely a solo act.
PLL Assists– U.S. Bank will support programs growing the sport in communities, recognizing that lacrosse builds not just athletes, but also futures.
Under the Helmet– An in-game feature providing access to mic’d-up players showcasing the power of teamwork through communication—values that sit at the heart of both organizations.
Google’s updates to media apps on Android Auto to allow apps to show different sections in the browsing UI and offer more flexibility in layout to build richer and more complete experiences
Google introduced two new changes to media apps on Android Auto. The first change is to the browsing interface in media apps. The new “SectionedItemTemplate” will allow apps to show different sections in the browsing UI, with Google’s example showing “Recent search” above a list of albums. The other change is the to “MediaPlaybackTemplate,” which is used as the “Now Playing” screen. It appears that Google is going to grant developers more flexibility in layout here, with the demo shown putting the media controls in the bottom right corner instead of the center, and in a different order than usual – although that might become the standard at some point. The UI isn’t drastically different or any harder to understand, but it’s a different layout than we usually see on Android Auto, which is actually a bit refreshing. Google is also allowing developers to build “richer and more complete experiences” for media apps using the “Car App Library.” This could make it easier to navigate some apps, as most media apps on Android Auto are shells of their smartphone counterpart in terms of functionality. This category is just in beta for now, though.
Banking groups led by ABA want the SEC to revoke its cybersecurity incident disclosure requirement because of need for confidentiality about critical infrastructure
American banking groups want the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to revoke its cybersecurity incident disclosure requirements. These groups, led by the American Bankers Association (ABA), wrote to the SEC last week, contending that disclosing cybersecurity incidents “directly conflicts with confidential reporting requirements intended to protect critical infrastructure and warn potential victims.” Joining the ABA were the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the Bank Policy Institute, Independent Community Bankers of America, and the Institute of International Bankers, who argue the rule hinders regulatory efforts to bolster national cybersecurity. The letter was flagged in a report Monday (May 26) by Cointelegraph, which noted that the rule in question — the SEC’s Cybersecurity Risk Management rule, published in July 2023 — requires companies to quickly disclose incidents such as data breaches or hacks. But the banking groups say this rule was flawed from the beginning and has been problematic in practice since going into effect. The letter said that the “complex and narrow disclosure delay mechanism” interferes with incident response and law enforcement, while also breeding “market confusion” between mandatory and voluntary disclosures.
Square’s new pop-up store in San Francisco to provide hands-on support in one-on-one consultations with Square experts and act as community hub for networking and collaboration
Square announced the opening of The Corner Store, a new community space for local businesses located at 1100 Valencia Street (corner of 22nd and Valencia) in San Francisco’s Mission District. Opening May 27th and running through June, this pop-up initiative will provide hands-on support and educational resources to area merchants and create a point of connection where home-grown businesses can network and collaborate. In 2024, Square processed more than 20,000 transactions per day in the Mission. The Corner Store will serve as both a daytime resource center and an evening community hub with programming for local business owners and operators. During business hours, sellers can access one-on-one consultations with Square experts, receive personalized guidance on Square’s suite of business tools, and get hands-on experience with the company’s latest innovations, including products and tools recently announced in Square Releases. A selection of curated goods from Mission-based Square sellers will be available, and hardware devices, including the recently announced Square Handheld, can be purchased on-site.
Curve Pay launches on iOS as Apple Pay alternative; to leverage iPhone NFC feature to offer more than tap-to-pay experience that includes split payments, rewards stacking and real-time spending
Curve announced the launch of Curve Pay on iOS, the first payment solution to leverage the newly accessible iPhone NFC interface after Apple’s acceptance of the European Commission’s ruling. As a staged wallet with built-in smart features — including real-time spending insights, the ability to switch payment sources post-transaction, and rewards stacking — Curve Pay gives iOS users more functionality than ever before. Now with Apple’s hands forced to open to competition, Curve Pay ushers in a new era of choice for iOS consumers,” said Shachar Bialick, CEO & Founder of Curve. “With Curve Pay also recently going live on Android, we are bringing universal access to all Curve users, regardless of device — so everyone can now manage their money, on any phone, with all the unique Curve benefits that comes with it.” Unlike pass-through wallets like Apple Pay, which simply transmit existing card credentials, Curve’s staged architecture means it actively sits in the payment flow. That allows Curve to offer far more than a tap-to-pay experience. Customers can retroactively change the card they used, split payments, earn cashback, track spending in real time and even pay from accounts like PayPal — all through a single app.
Finley’s Monthly Servicer Reporting (MSR) solution for corporate borrowers with warehouse facilities offers a centralized hub for MSR management through integrated visibility
Finley has launched enhanced Monthly Servicer Reporting (MSR) capabilities to help corporate borrowers with warehouse facilities overcome logistical and technological challenges. The new capabilities address collaboration, data management, and knowledge management issues in MSR generation and management. The market for private credit is projected to reach $3.5 trillion by 2028, making MSRs crucial in asset-based transactions. Finley’s MSR capability is integrated into its Deliverables module, providing a centralized hub for all MSR needs. This module offers: Clear Deadline Visibility: Borrowers gain instant access to “Due Soon” reports and historical submissions, ensuring a single source of truth for preparing current MSRs and reviewing past outputs. Structured Requirements: MSRs often require 14-16 distinct input files, each with specific formatting requirements. Finley clearly outlines these needs, whether the files are programmatically generated or manually entered. A Collaboration and Analysis Hub: After submission, Finley customers can see all MSR data points, team discussions, historical files, and relevant analytics in the same Deliverables module. This moves MSR management from the email inbox into a purpose-built system. Finley tackles the complexities of data aggregation head-on, ensuring files are correctly formatted and easily managed: Guided File Generation: Within the platform, Finley provides a clear breakdown of required files and their exact formatting specifications. Each requirement comes with a “data dictionary” that provides crucial context, especially when Finance teams are collaborating with Data or Engineering teams for historical or point-in-time reports. Enhanced Collaboration and Versioning: Recognizing that generating files correctly on the first attempt isn’t always possible, Finley includes robust collaboration tools and versioning capabilities. This allows teams to track changes, view previously submitted files, and work with internal and external collaborators.
Vercel’s AI model enables creating independent, scalable web-based checkout systems on developers’ own domains by offering customisable template with frontend components through API
The team behind Vercel’s V0, an AI-powered platform for web creation, has developed an AI model it claims excels at certain website development tasks. Available through an API, the model, called “v0-1.0-md,” can be prompted with text or images, and was “optimized for front-end and full-stack web development,” the Vercel team says. Currently in beta, it requires a V0 Premium plan ($20 per month) or Team plan ($30 per user per month) with usage-based billing enabled. Vercel’s model can “auto-fix” common coding issues, the Vercel team says, and it’s compatible with tools and SDKs that support OpenAI’s API format. Evaluated on web development frameworks like Next.js, the model can ingest up to 128,000 tokens in one go. The launch of V0’s model comes as more developers and companies look to adopt AI-powered tools for programming.
New “selective generation” framework method uses a smaller, separate “intervention model” to decide whether the main LLM should generate an answer or abstain
A new study from Google researchers introduces “sufficient context,” a novel perspective for understanding and improving retrieval augmented generation (RAG) systems in large language models (LLMs). This approach makes it possible to determine if an LLM has enough information to answer a query accurately, a critical factor for developers building real-world enterprise applications where reliability and factual correctness are paramount. They found that Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro model, with a single example (1-shot), performed best in classifying context sufficiency, achieving high F1 scores and accuracy. The paper notes, “In real-world scenarios, we cannot expect candidate answers when evaluating model performance. Hence, it is desirable to use a method that works using only the query and context.” Interestingly, while RAG generally improves overall performance, additional context can also reduce a model’s ability to abstain from answering when it doesn’t have sufficient information. Given the finding that models may hallucinate rather than abstain, especially with RAG compared to no RAG setting, the researchers explored techniques to mitigate this. They developed a new “selective generation” framework. This method uses a smaller, separate “intervention model” to decide whether the main LLM should generate an answer or abstain, offering a controllable trade-off between accuracy and coverage. This framework can be combined with any LLM, including proprietary models like Gemini and GPT. The study found that using sufficient context as an additional signal in this framework leads to significantly higher accuracy for answered queries across various models and datasets. This method improved the fraction of correct answers among model responses by 2–10% for Gemini, GPT, and Gemma models. For enterprise teams looking to apply these insights to their own RAG systems, such as those powering internal knowledge bases or customer support AI, Cyrus Rashtchian, co-author of the study outlines a practical approach. He suggests first collecting a dataset of query-context pairs that represent the kind of examples the model will see in production. Next, use an LLM-based autorater to label each example as having sufficient or insufficient context. “This already will give a good estimate of the % of sufficient context,” Rashtchian said. “If it is less than 80-90%, then there is likely a lot of room to improve on the retrieval or knowledge base side of things — this is a good observable symptom.”
Nonbanks are increasingly applying for bank charters to gain inroads into processing transactions and connecting directly to payment infrastructure
Nonbanks, including FinTechs like Fiserv and Stripe, are increasingly applying for bank charters to gain inroads into processing transactions and connecting directly to payment infrastructure. This trend comes against a backdrop of previously muted de novo activity, with regulators potentially easing the application process. Specific limited purpose charters, such as Merchant Acquirer Limited Purpose Banks in Georgia and proposed “payments banks” in Nevada, are emerging that allow connection to rails like FedNow and merchant acquiring activities but prohibit lending. The “Nevada Payments Bank Act” would create new banks that exist for the purpose of money movement. The bill would let new banks connect, directly, to payments infrastructure including FedNow. The door would be open, then, for FinTechs to connect directly to real-time rails. Beyond the scope of those firms, other nonbanks, including retailers, would be able to gain direct access to money movement, which, according to the bill’s sponsors, would lower transaction costs. Those lower costs would come through skirting interchange fees. Securing direct access through these limited charters allows nonbanks and potentially retailers to connect directly to real-time rails, building new revenue streams and foster stronger relationships with merchants. The direct connection to the payment rails and the card rails, as these charters are pursued and granted, would allow these (limited in scope) banks to serve merchants in new ways and in turn, forge stickier relationships with those merchants.