Shoppers walk outside the Macy’s store in New York’s Herald Square January 11, 2019. Don Emmert | AFP | Getty Images Americans are turning to up-and-coming fintech firms instead of traditional banking options to pile on debt. The unsecured personal loan market hit an all-time high last year, surging 17 percent year over year to $138 billion, according to data from TransUnion released Thursday. Digital-first financial technology companies were largely responsible for that momentum. “The rapid...

SuperStock | Getty Images Instead of trying to beat a wave of high-growth financial technology start-ups at their own game, a group of small banks is opting to join them. These low-profile community banks quietly run the plumbing underneath billion-dollar fintech firms such as Square, Stripe and Robinhood — handling mundane banking activities for them like holding customer deposits and underwriting loans — while the tech firms remake finance for a digital age. For some, it’s a match made in...

A customer uses an automatic teller machine (ATM) at a SunTrust Banks Inc. branch in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2018. Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images Going digital isn’t cheap. Banks are spending billions to keep up with the break-neck speed in technology and upgrade older, legacy systems. But firms without billions of dollars to pour into that effort are forced to get creative. One option is teaming up. BB&T and SunTrust announced they were taking that route on...

Warren Buffett David A. Grogan | CNBC At first blush, Berkshire Hathaway’s recent early-stage fintech investments may seem out of place. But they do fit with Warren Buffett’s longtime strategy of making multiple bets across an entire industry. Buffett’s conglomerate, which typically takes stakes in blue chip American companies, recently invested about $600 million in two fintech companies focused on emerging markets — Paytm and StoneCo, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Both...

Nouriel Roubini at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. David A. Grogan | CNBC Global economist Nouriel Roubini, one of the few who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, is making sure U.S. senators don’t miss his warning on cryptocurrency. Within minutes of testifying at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Roubini sounded alarms on multiple aspects of the new digital asset class. “Crypto is the mother or father of all scams and bubbles,” Roubini, also a professor...