FTC warns auto dealers about price transparency by Ballard CFS Group 

The staff of the Federal Trade Commission has published Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to warn the automobile industry that it must comply with FTC Act requirements on vehicle pricing.

The guidance emphasizes that the advertised price of a vehicle must be the actual price that a consumer can walk in and pay to purchase the vehicle. Only charges that the government requires the consumer to pay may be excluded, according to the commission.

“The goal is simple: to ensure that the advertised price reflects reality,” the FTC said, in issuing the document. “That way, consumers can comparison‑shop with confidence, and honest dealers can compete fairly on transparent, all‑in pricing.”

Read more at Ballard Spahr L.L.P.

How AI Decisioning Could Improve Earned Wage Access Portfolio Health

by More Than 80%

In the Earned Wage Access (EWA) programs supported by Mbanq, we are seeing improving repayment behavior and historically low portfolio losses. Our analysis of transaction and behavioral data has led to a substantial opportunity: AI-assisted decisioning could improve EWA portfolio health by more than 80%, while supporting account growth and profitability.

These findings come at a time when conventional consumer credit remains expensive for many Americans. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, U.S. credit card balances reached $1.26 trillion in the second quarter of 2026. The average interest rate on commercial bank credit card plans stood at 21.19% in August.

Read more at Finextra

Optimize Lending Decisions with Real-Time Financial Data.

Enhance lead purchasing, underwriting, and product line

assignment with ValidiFI’s data-driven solutions

Affordable Housing Out of Reach for Half of All U.S. Workers

A sweeping report shows that inadequate building, high interest rates and wage stagnation have pushed housing costs too high for workers in surprising numbers of professions.

Half of construction site workers in Asheville earn less than the $59,840 needed to rent a one-bedroom apartment and civil engineers earning nearly $100,000 a year find it difficult to afford a home in the city, according to a recent report by the National Housing Conference titled “Priced Out: When a good job isn’t enough.”

The report examines the nationwide housing affordability crisis impacting workers across all income levels. The authors cite “decades of underbuilding, rising interest rates, and wage stagnation” for pushing homeownership and rental housing further out of reach for many workers. It used its Paycheck to Paycheck database to track affordability changes in 390 metropolitan statistical areas from 2019 to 2024. The authors shared case studies from Asheville; Boise, Idaho; Houston; Tampa, Florida; and Seattle.

Read more at Governing.com

Louisiana Banned Debit Card Surcharges. The Fees Aren’t Going Away.

A new consumer protection law prevents merchants from adding debit card surcharges, but businesses still have to pay banks and card networks every time a customer swipes — costs that may ultimately show up as higher prices.

A new state law prohibits merchants from adding surcharges to debit card transactions, but critics say the ban actually benefits the banks and credit card companies that created the fees.

Supporters of Act 751, which took effect Aug. 1, have promoted the measure as a consumer protection law that bars merchants from imposing surcharges specifically on debit card transactions. It does not apply to credit cards, for which retailers can still add a fee to each customer purchase.

Read more at Governing.com

Have a tax law question?

Our #IRS Interactive Tax Assistant has answers.

Watch this short video to learn more:

https://youtu.be/y6HkaBkdKdU

Jose L. Santiago

Public Affairs Specialist

Tax Outreach, Partnership and Education

Email: jose.l.santiago@irs.gov

Millennials and Gen Z Are Ditching Checking Accounts from Traditional Banks.

AI is Helping Them Find Alternatives

Millennials and Gen Z Now Account for Two Thirds of New Checking Accounts. That’s Not Good News for Banks

A little good news: New research from JD Power confirms that branches remain a draw for many Millennial and Gen Z consumers opening new primary checking accounts.

The bad news: The same research — the first-time U.S. Millennial and Gen Z Checking Satisfaction Study — indicates that plain vanilla checking accounts don’t hold much appeal for these core consumers. Instead, JD Power says they want checking accounts that function as financial “command centers,” not just a tool for transactions.

The study also found that AI has become a significant product-shopping channel for Millennials and Gen Z, with 31% of those surveyed saying that they have taken financial actions based on AI advice.

Read more at The Financial Brand

Why Cities Struggle to Hire Despite More Applicants

A surge in job applications hasn't solved local government staffing shortages. A workforce expert explains why, and what governments can do to fill gaps.

Government employees provide many of the day-to-day services that cities offer residents, including stocking and caring for the books they check out of libraries, collecting their trash and recyclables, and inspecting the restaurants where they gather with family and friends. While the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the nature of work for many, this largely manifested for public sector employees as high vacancy rates, fewer staff members to handle a growing workload, and increased overtime demands. These disruptions accelerated the rate of retirements and consequently slowed the delivery of key services.

In recent years, municipal agencies have taken steps to address staffing shortages and other pandemic-related effects through hiring and recruitment. In Philadelphia, the size of the public workforce is roughly the same as it was before COVID.

Read more at Governing.com

PayYield lifts net portfolio yield on every consumer repayment: clearing available funds on debits that

decline today, and cutting what you pay to accept

the dollars that do clear.

This Week’s Top 5 Stories in Fintech

SBS has launched the SBS AI Foundation, a sovereign AI platform built with NVIDIA to let banks run generative and agentic AI without customer or transaction data leaving their own environment. 

The platform is already live with Scottish Building Society on AWS and is available to SBS’ global base of more than 1,500 financial institutions.

The launch addresses a persistent banking constraint: AI often performs best when models can access broad operational data. However, banks must comply with GDPR, local data-residency rules and internal controls. 

Read more at Fintech Magazine

Governing.com

3,500

That's how many Americans researchers at the University of Chicago's Climate Impact Lab project will die from extreme heat between June 2026 and February 2027, driven by this year's "super El Nino" ..

Maximize Your Call Center

E-Complish, LLC Launches: IntellAgent™, a 24/7

AI Companion for Customer Account Management &

Payment Processing

Debt is eating up a bigger chunk of your raise, research shows

Key Points

Debt payments consume an estimated 52 cents of every dollar of inflation-adjusted take-home household income gained for a typical worker, new research finds.

The share of families spending more than 40% of income on debt payments has reached its highest level since 2013, according to Federal Reserve data.

Experts say understanding why you’re borrowing, budgeting and comparing prices can help prevent debt from becoming a bigger burden.

Read more at CNBC

34%

That's the share of California businesses that survive 10 years or more, placing the state 28th out of 50 in business longevity, just below the national norm of 35 percent

Governing.com

Sitting on the Sidelines Until After the Midterms?

You’re not alone. Many business owners and executives are waiting for greater clarity from the November elections before committing to their

next phase of growth.

But waiting to make the decision doesn’t mean you

should wait to prepare for it.

If additional capital will be part of your growth strategy once the political

and economic environment becomes clearer, now may be the right time

to begin the conversation.

Ohio Sees Nation's Biggest Drop in Homeownership Affordability

The share of occupations able to afford a typical home fell from 67 percent to 26 percent in five years.

Ohio had the steepest decline in homeownership affordability between 2020 to 2025, according to new reporting from the National Housing Conference.

The number of occupations able to afford a typically priced home with a 10% down payment fell nearly 41% across Ohio’s metropolitan areas from 2020 to 2025, according to the second annual Priced Out: When a Good Job Isn’t Enough report.

“This report shows that home ownership is becoming a luxury in Ohio, and that jobs that used to be considered solidly middle class — like being a firefighter or mail carrier — are getting shut out of the American dream,” said Marcus Roth, spokesperson for the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio.

Read more at Governing.com

Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality

Most Americans say there’s too much economic inequality in the United States these days. To understand how people’s financial circumstances have changed in recent decades, we looked at trends in income and wealth for lower-, middle- and upper-income households since 2000.

Income and wealth have grown for each group. But the gains have been greatest for upper-income households, leading to increased economic inequality.

The median income for upper-income households increased 25% between 2001 and 2024 (from $222,800 to $278,800). Incomes for middle- and lower-income households grew less over that period – 22% and 17%, respectively. (All income figures have been adjusted for inflation.)

Read more at PEW Research

LEND360 was a Great Success! 

The 2026 LEND360 Conference was a Great Success!

We had a record number of attendees, including record numbers of CEOs and lenders. Networking was king with a record number of meetings booked through our LEND360 platform combined with numerous additional opportunities for participants to make that next connection. The content was incredible, too.

Highlight speakers included Wade Arnold of Moov, Naftali Harris of SentiLink, Sherrie Rees of First Electronic Bank, Jer Woods of Block, Rodney Williams of SoLo Funds, Manoj Verma of TabaPay, Sarah Hartung of Old National Bank, Meredith Winegar of

Old National Bank, and famed political commentator

Karl Rove.

We had over 20 focused content sessions that addressed key issues facing our industry using the expertise of our 100+ speakers to give participants concrete takeaways. 

We extend a special thank you to the 90+ sponsors (including a sold-out exhibit floor)

that made this show possible. We are already working to make next year’s show even better and look forward to seeing everyone at the

2027 LEND360 event in Chicago on October 4-6.

Unlocking the Revenue Potential of Your Existing Customer Base

New relationships can take nearly two years to turn profitable. Your existing customers may offer a faster path.

Customer acquisition costs keep rising, and new relationships can take nearly two years to become profitable. Meanwhile, your most valuable customer data is often scattered across systems, teams and individual workflows.

This session will cover a practical three-pillar framework for community banks and credit unions: onboarding and early engagement, always-on engagement, and data-informed expansion. Attendees will learn how to reduce early attrition, make outreach more relevant and coordinate every team around relationship growth.

Read more at The Financial Brand

Our Vision is to become the leading

PAYDAY + ALTERNATIVE LENDER

in NORTH AMERICA

PEW: From our research

70%

The share of Americans who say they’ve cut back their spending on extras –

 like dining out or entertainment – in the past year.

What Does It Mean to Be the Top State for Business?

Ohio's No. 1 CNBC ranking highlights its economic strengths but also underscores what business scorecards don't measure.

When CNBC last week announced it had rated Ohio this year’s “Top State for Business,” Republican leaders said it was proof that their economic policies were working for Ohioans. But that’s not what the rating was meant to assess, said a journalist who helped produce it.

Nor was the ranking an evaluation of which state had attracted the most high-quality jobs. It was something less concrete: a measure of which states were best positioned according to the criteria on which states market themselves.

Read more at Governing.com

$1.2 trillion

That's the estimated cost of President Donald Trump's "Trump Dividend" proposal, a promise to send every American adult a $5,000 check if Republicans win the November midterms ...

Governing.com

The College Closure Crisis Is Spreading Beyond Campus

Colleges are shutting down at a pace of roughly one every three weeks, threatening local economies, access to higher education and the supply of skilled workers.

The parking lots are mostly vacant. Locked and dark, many of the buildings are lifeless but for dying plants in dusty pots. One of the few people visible is a white-bearded man on a riding mower, tending to an empty lawn as if by habit.

This is not a factory or office park abandoned by its tenants. It’s Hampshire College, a once-celebrated liberal arts school that will shut down in December. That makes it the latest in a steady stream of colleges that are closing or merging, at a rate that last year reached the equivalent of nearly one every three weeks.

Read more at Governing.com

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12

That's how many states have reported cyberattacks on their water and

wastewater systems since July 26 

Governing.com

The Government Financial Report Is Changing. Here’s What Matters.

New accounting standards taking effect now, along with a pipeline of additional fiscal-reporting projects, are reshaping what governments must disclose. The stakes extend well beyond the finance office.

Ask most elected officials what is in their government’s annual financial report and the answer is usually some version of: not much. The document — formally called the annual comprehensive financial report (ACFR) — arrives after the fiscal year ends, runs to dozens or hundreds of pages and is written in accounting language that most governing bodies never engage with.

Yet the ACFR is the single most complete picture of a government’s fiscal health. It contains audited fund balances, long-term debt obligations, pension liabilities, infrastructure condition and the structural relationship between revenues and costs.

Read more at Governing.com

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