In line with its course to become the world’s leading digital bank Citibank announced the launch of a dedicated consumer banking app for iPad.

HSBC Plc plans to cut its workforce which may account for more than 10,000 employees, as the bank seeks to cut its costs, reported Sky News, citing the sources with the knowledge of the matter. Sky News adds that the plans of the bank have not been yet finalized. Meantime, officials at the company provide no comments.

Wells Fargo is encouraging its student customers to take care of the security of their personal and financial information to minimize the risks of fraud and identity theft. According to the stats by Javelin Strategy & Research (2010) people aged 18 to 24 detect fraud in twice as many days as other age groups, which makes them fraud victims for longer periods.

US Bank is launching U.S. Bank MasterCard® PayPass™ VITAband® service, a light-weight and durable wristband that combines contactless payment technology with emergency contact and medical information.

Bank of America nears to settle claims from its powerful investors to pay them $8.5 billion, according to the sources familiar with the situation. These investors lost their money on mortgage-backed securities. Such a deal would encourage investors to seek compensation from other lenders like Wells Fargo & Co and JPMorgan Chase & Co, analysts believe.

Standard Chartered reported that its income growth leveled up with cost growth in the first half of this year as its austerity policy helped it evade more than a year of expenses outpacing profit. The bank expected profit before tax to rise by a double-digit figure in the first half of the year, helped by strong growth in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, China and Indonesia, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange. In a move to cut costs the bank decreased its workforce in the region.  

Capital One Financial Corp announced its plan to purchase ING Groep NV's U.S. online bank for $9 billion in cash and stock. Capital One will pay $6.2 billion in cash and $2.8 billion in stock. That will help ING, a Dutch banking and insurance conglomerate in the middle of a breakup, repay the remainder of the money it owes to the Dutch government for a 2008 bailout. The company also will receive a 9.9 percent stake in Capital One as part of the deal and will have the right to name a director to the U.S. bank's board.

This week Citigroup Inc reported new figures of how may users had been affected by the May data breach. The company said that it affected over 360,000 of its customers, or almost twice the initial number. Citi has been pressed by regulators to disclose the details of data breach. On Wednesday the company provided more information. The breach, which Citigroup first made public on June 8, was initially detected on May 10. A total of 360,083 North American Citigroup credit card accounts were affected by the breach, the bank said.

Bank of America is accused of hindering the US regulators to review foreclosure practices of the company, says the court filing. The mortgage practices of BofA have been investigated by federal regulators and state attorneys general including the use of "robo-signers" to sign hundreds of unread foreclosure documents a day. The Department of Housing and Urban Development inspector general's office conducted a review of the five largest mortgage servicers, including Bank of America, which is the biggest.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America announced the shutdown of their joint venture launched three years ago to process automated clearing house transactions between the two banks. The two companies stated that they abandon the operation, which they called Pariter. “It will shut down over the next few weeks,” a Wells spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News. “It will take a few weeks to figure out what the specific impacts are.” “It was a mutual decision, amicable,” says the Wells spokesperson.

The three largest US banks Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have unveiled their new P2P payments joint venture. The banks say that their customers will be able to transfer and move funds directly from their existing checking accounts using an e-mail address or mobile number – instead of providing checking account and routing numbers.

The Financial Times reported that Bank of America Corp plans to decrease its $850 billion portfolio of troubled home loans by about half within the following three years. However, the company spokespersons failed to detail what exactly the company would do to achieve this goal. The company suffered hard times due to the housing crisis and the purchase of Countrywide Financial. Last month, Bank of America posted an unexpectedly sharp drop in first-quarter profit as higher expenses from delayed home foreclosures weighed on its mortgage business.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has set new policies to reduce expensive and risky cash in favor of electronic payment methods. The bank released a circular to industry participants that outlines new rules for paper cash. The circular says that the dominance of paper money has big cash management, security and money laundering implications.

JPMorgan has enhanced its suite of cash management solutions in Asia Pacific including JPMorgan ACCESS, JPMorgan Receivables Edge and International Demand Deposit Account ("iDDA") platform. JPMorgan ACCESS and JPMorgan Receivables Edge now support additional languages including Japanese and Chinese. Besides, JPMorgan ACCESS now supports newly-added flexible approval rules and Receivables Edge has also been enhanced with improved logic rules to increase the automatic match and reconciliation rate for single receipts for multiple invoices.

This week Bank of America announced its plans to spin off its large private equity fund that possesses over $5 billion in assets. In addition, a company spokesperson said it has no plans to make new private equity investments. BofA will spin off BAML Capital Partners into its own unnamed firm. The firm would then manage the bank's private equity assets for a fee -- winding those positions down over time -- and could begin accepting outside investors. The assets will remain on BofA's balance sheet until they are wound down.