With the Fed taking aim at the red-hot U.S. labor market in its efforts to cool inflation, WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains how small businesses could be in trouble. Illustration: Elizabeth Smelov The federal program for small-business lending is undergoing its biggest makeover in decades.

Share Hindenburg Research released a report based on a two-year investigation, accusing Block of inflating user numbers Shares of the payments company formerly known as Square fell about 15% on Thursday after a short seller questioned the company’s user numbers and accused it of predatory tactics. Hindenburg Research said a two-year investigation into Block Inc. SQ -14.82%decrease; red down pointing triangle found the company “obfuscates” its Cash App service’s true user numbers by reporting...

When Jean Chalopin applied to buy a tiny bank in Washington state nearly three years ago, he made modest promises to bring not-so-new innovations such as ATM cards to a place with few local banking options. Farmington State Bank’s business plan wouldn’t change, Mr. Chalopin, a onetime TV and film producer who co-created the “Inspector Gadget” cartoon, assured federal regulators in documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The banks of the future are having a rough present. Financial-tech companies, long hyped for their vision of bringing Silicon Valley-style innovation to the businesses of lending, investing and payments, underperformed both financial stocks and tech stocks more broadly in 2022. A vulnerability to higher interest rates, the disappearance of many pandemic-era catalysts and a more general reckoning for companies that followed growth-at-all-costs playbooks contributed to many fintech firms’ fall...

Tether Holdings Ltd. said it is winding down its practice of lending out its own stablecoins to customers by next year, addressing a broad risk to the wider crypto world. In a blog post published on its website Tuesday, the company said it would reduce secured loans issued and denominated in tether to zero throughout 2023.