Letitia O’Brien was down to about $1.70. It was March and the 62-year-old retired nurse had found herself here before. Months earlier, when she didn’t have enough to cover an electric bill around $300 and a CT scan of her chest that cost her about $100, her account with PNC Financial Services Group Inc. overdrafted, triggering a chain of $36 fees. Now she was worried that an upcoming grocery delivery could put her back in the same dark place. “I’m just laying here worrying,” O’Brien said. “If...

The Federal Reserve debuted a new payments system designed to speed up the movement of money among banks around the US, the central bank’s first new network in decades. The new system, called FedNow, will allow eligible banks with accounts at the Federal Reserve to send money instantly starting Thursday. So far, about 50 institutions have completed the formal testing and certification needed to send or receive payments on the new network, the central bank said. The new network is a long time...

Wall Street’s biggest banks whittled down their ranks by about 21,000 people in the first six months of the year as they rejiggered workforces amid a slump in dealmaking and capital markets activity. With the reductions in headcount, severance costs drove up expenses across the six largest US banks. Expenses tied to personnel and compensation jumped 6% to $95.5 billion. “We were early in January in starting to work on the headcount sizing, we took a couple of actions so far this year and we...

Barclays Plc’s Paul Leech and Todd Sandoz, who have led the firm’s equities trading business since 2020, are leaving the British bank. Stephen Dainton will run the equities unit on an interim basis in addition to his responsibilities as co-head of the firm’s broader global markets business, according to a memo to staff seen by Bloomberg News. Dainton, who previously ran the equities business, is not planning to change the unit’s strategy or client proposition as part of the changes, the memo...

Debit-card rewards programs, which had all but disappeared at the biggest U.S. banks, might be making a comeback. Citigroup Inc. is considering the idea, as well as other types of rewards for checking and savings accounts, to entice customers to sign up for its fledgling online bank, which it began to roll out nationwide earlier this year. Instead of offering higher rates to attract deposits, Citigroup will work with retailers it already partners with -- such as American Airlines Group Inc....