U.S. Market Close 01/16/2026

DOW 30  -0.17%  -83.11  49,359.33

S&P 500  -0.06%  -4.46  6,940.01

NASDAQ 100  -0.07%  -17.81  25,529.26

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Trump Takes on Swipe Fees: What He Said and Why It Matters

In a Truth Social post, President Trump backed a bill called the Credit Card Competition Act (sometimes called the Durbin-Marshall credit card mandate), saying it will help put an end to what he calls “out-of-control swipe fee rip-offs.” Swipe fees — more formally known as interchange fees — are the charges merchants pay every time a customer pays with a credit card. Although these fees are not directly visible to consumers, merchants often argue that they are reflected in higher prices for goods and services.

We have been following the Credit Card Competition Act for several years and have previously discussed the proposal in our blogs and podcasts.

President Trump’s endorsement of the bill follows shortly after his separate Truth Social post advocating a temporary 10% cap on credit card interest rates.

Read more at Ballard Spahr L.L.P. 

Outlook for Private Credit in 2026

The private credit market has reached a pivotal stage in its growth, with direct lending now matching the broadly syndicated loan market at $1.5-2 trillion in size and forecast to reach $3 trillion by 2028.

Furthermore, private credit has expanded beyond direct lending to include other strategies including asset-backed finance and debt-equity hybrid capital. What began as an alternative to traditional bond and syndicated loan markets for smaller deals or where those markets were not available has evolved into a key segment of global capital markets, reshaping how companies, including large public companies, access financing.

The Broadening Scope of Private Credit

While private credit historically originated as direct lending in senior loan format to middle market, below-investment-grade companies, the market has undergone a transformation in both scope and sophistication.

Read more at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP

Gen X and millennials set to inherit historic amount of wealth over the next decade

An unprecedented $38.3 trillion of wealth is set to be transferred to younger generations globally over the next 10 years, with Gen X and millennials receiving the biggest share of that money, according to Coldwell Banker’s Global Luxury 2026 Trend report published Friday.

The wealth transfer from the baby boomers who pass away also includes $4.6 trillion in real estate, the report found.

"The next generations are inheriting a historic amount of wealth and approaching luxury with intention," Coldwell Banker Global Luxury Vice President Michael Altneu said in a statement. "They are choosing homes that reflect their identity, support their day-to-day lifestyles, and protect long-term financial value. For many, real estate has become a strategic piece of their wealth planning and a sanctuary for their well-being."

Read more at YAHOO FINANCE

Counting AI: A blueprint to integrate AI investment and use data into US national statistics - BROOKINGS

Output was easier to measure when the bulk of the economy consisted of agriculture and manufactured goods. The rise of the knowledge economy and service sector has made it much harder to construct accurate national income and product accounts (NIPA) that undergird gross domestic product (GDP) calculations. That is because intangible capital tends to drive the bulk of investment and growth in certain sectors, and increasingly, in all parts of the economy.

Research led by Ellen McGrattan and the late Edward Prescott has shown that failure to incorporate intangible capital leads to an underestimate of GDP in macroeconomic models of the business cycle. Other research has found that about $800 billion in annual U.S. business spending on intangibles (as of 2003) was uncounted, leaving over $3 trillion in intangible capital stock invisible in official data. Computer-related, intangible organizational complements in particular have grown, which can help explain how computers affect the demand of skilled labor and productivity growth.

Read more at The Brookings Institution

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Public finance in the age of AI: A primer - BROOKINGS

Abstract

Transformative artificial intelligence (TAI)—machines capable of performing virtually all economically valuable work—may gradually erode the two main tax bases that underpin modern tax systems: labor income and human consumption. We examine optimal taxation across two stages of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven transformation. First, if AI displaces human labor, we find that consumption taxation may serve as a primary revenue instrument, with differential commodity taxation gaining renewed relevance as labor distortions lose their constraining role. In the second stage, as autonomous artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems both produce most economic value and absorb a growing share of resources, taxing human consumption may become an inadequate means of raising revenue. We show that the taxation of autonomous AGI systems can be framed as an optimal harvesting problem and find that the resulting tax rate on AGI depends on the rate at which humans discount the future. Our analysis provides a theoretically grounded approach to balancing efficiency and equity in the Age of AI. We also apply our insights to evaluate specific proposals such as taxes on robots, compute, and tokens, as well as sovereign wealth funds and windfall clauses.

Read more at The Brookings Institution

Merchant Cash Advance Defaults Surge 59% to $2.2 Billion as Businesses Turn to Reverse Consolidation

Major merchant cash advance providers reported combined defaults totaling $2.22 billion in 2024, up from $1.40 billion in 2023, a 59% increase driven by businesses struggling with stacked merchant cash advances. The surge in defaults across providers including PayPal, Shopify, Square, US Bank, Citigroup, and Enova highlights how multiple daily and weekly ACH withdrawals are compressing working capital to crisis levels.

ReverseConsolidation.com, which evaluates businesses for merchant cash advance consolidation solutions, reports similar trends in its intake data, identifying $46 million in defaulted MCA balances through 2024 evaluations compared to $29 million in 2023. The widespread increase in defaults has accelerated demand for reverse consolidation as businesses seek alternatives to bankruptcy or closure.

Read more at BarChart

Contact Chuck.Sockol@mcrc.biz to discuss your recovery needs

Crypto card spending hits $18 billion annualized as stablecoin use shifts to everyday payments

Artemis research shows crypto credit and debit card spending is now rivaling peer-to-peer stablecoin transfers, with Visa capturing most on-chain volume through early infrastructure partnerships.

What to know:

• Crypto card spending has surged from about $100 million a month in early 2023 to more than $1.5 billion by late 2025.
• Despite interest in direct stablecoin payments at merchants, cards remain the primary way to spend stablecoins because they run on existing Visa and Mastercard networks and require no new merchant integrations.
• USDT dominates stablecoin volume globally, but India and Argentina are notable outliers where USDC usage nears parity.

Crypto cards, payment cards that let users spend stablecoins and other crypto at traditional merchants, have quietly become one of the fastest-growing segments in digital payments, with volume now approaching the scale of peer-to-peer stablecoin transfers, according to new research from Artemis.

Read more at CoinDesk

Fintech Funding Jumped 27% In 2025 With Fewer Deals But Bigger Checks

Global venture funding to fintech startups climbed in 2025 to its highest level in several quarters, boosted by later-stage deals, Crunchbase data shows.

Total global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $51.8 billion for the year, per Crunchbase data. That’s a fairly significant – 27% – increase from 2024’s total of $40.8 billion raised.

Unsurprisingly, the numbers are still much lower than the peak of $141.6 billion raised in 2021 and the $90.2 billion raised in 2022. But they are trending upward at least, unlike in 2024, when they fell below 2023 levels.

And, for the first time in recent years 2025 funding totals came in above pre-pandemic sums, which were $50.8 billion in 2020 and $49.3 billion in 2019.

Read more at CRUNCHBASE

Introducing the IRS Spotlight: BROOKINGS

The IRS Spotlight provides data and analysis on federal tax administration relating to: leadership and workforce, tax compliance and enforcement, taxpayer services, immigration, paperwork processing, and data and modernization.

The IRS recently announced that this year’s tax filing season will open on January 26, 2026. Ahead of tax season, we are proud to announce the launch of a new resource.

The IRS Spotlight provides researchers, journalists, and the public with regularly updated and accessible data and analysis regarding federal tax administration.

Want to know more about call wait times at the IRS? Curious about leadership turnover at the agency? Interested in the latest public documents from the lawsuits over IRS-ICE data sharing? We’ve got you covered.

Read more at The Brookings Institution

Empathy in Client Communications: An AI Prompt Every Financial Advisor Should Know

Key Takeaways

• Clear prompts create clearer and safer emails.
• Provide the AI with explicit and unmistakable compliance boundaries in your prompts.
• AI supports better communications at scale, leaving advisors more time to deepen relationships with clients.

When clients face challenging times, such as market downturns, significant life transitions, or other periods of uncertainty, financial advisors must communicate with empathy and clarity, but finding the right words can be challenging, especially when managing multiple client relationships. AI can help, but you must know how to prompt it to get the results you need.

Goal of the Prompt 

Your clients need more than just facts from your client communications; they need to feel heard and understood. A well-crafted AI prompt helps advisors quickly generate a message that balances empathy with professionalism. 

Read more at INVESTOPEDIA

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Top 5 Stories of the Week in Fintech

Included is agentic progress from Google and Mastercard, Revolut’s anti-fraud tool, stablecoin news from Ingenico, Visa, and BVNK and Polygon’s acquisition

Anti-Fraud: What Does Revolut’s New Feature Achieve?

Revolut, the global fintech with more than 65 million customers, is launching a new in-app feature designed to protect users from impersonation scams

Revolut’s new in-app feature aims at empowering users with anti-fraud tools and actionable protection. 

The Call Identification feature detects when a user is on the app and is receiving a phone-call in real-time. 

Read more at FinTechMagazine

JPMorgan Forms New Team to Get In on the Boom in Private Markets

JPMorgan Chase is building out a new team inside its investment bank to help companies raise private capital as an alternative to going public, a sign that America’s biggest bank thinks the private markets will remain dominant even with some mega IPOs expected later this year.

The details

The public stock markets just aren’t what they used to be. There has been a general decline of initial public offerings while more companies are opting to raise money from big investors and remain private companies. Private-equity firms have also been holding on to their portfolio companies for longer, often transferring them into new “secondary” funds instead of selling to another firm. And institutional investors are intensely focused on the private markets and have raised huge sums to invest there.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

Working Families Tax Cuts Bring Bigger Paychecks

Washington, D.C.—Workers receiving their first paychecks of 2026 are finding them bigger than ever thanks to the Working Families Tax Cuts spearheaded by U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). Between stronger economic growth and employers updating tax withholding according to the new law, Idahoans can expect to see up to $6,400 in real wage increases this year. Additionally, because many of these changes took effect retroactively to the beginning of 2025, Americans will see supersized refunds this tax filing season, which the U.S. Department of the Treasury estimates will reach $100 billion in total.

“Americans are seeing bigger paychecks now that they reflect the changes Republicans made in our Working Families Tax Cuts,” said Crapo. “Helping people keep more of the money they work hard for is both a matter of principle and an important part of spurring economic growth. With more money in their pockets, Americans can begin to move past the Biden-created affordability crisis.”

Read more at Senate Committee on Finance

Amscot opens Tallahassee branch

Amscot Financial, a financial services company, has opened a branch in Tallahassee, as part of a strategic effort to expand in the Florida Panhandle, according to a press release.

The Tallahassee location joins a statewide network of more than 230 branches. The opening follows recent expansions in Jacksonville, Port St. Lucie, and St. Augustine, which the company attributes to increased demand for short-term financial services.

Founded in 1989 by CEO Ian MacKechnie, the family-owned company provides cash advances, check cashing and bill payment services. The new branch will also offer money orders, notary services and Clerk of Court payment collections for child support and legal obligations.

"This new Tallahassee location allows us to bring our services even closer to local families," MacKechnie said in the release.

Read more HERE

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start-up, product development, and product evolution stages. PS

Interchange bill should be rejected in any form

Misguided credit card interchange mandates would harm consumers, small businesses, and community financial institutions while delivering a windfall to corporate megastores. America’s Credit Unions, Defense Credit Union Council, and Independent Community Bankers of America joined together in writing Congress Thursday, urging lawmakers to reject the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA).

Sens. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Reps. Lance Gooden, R-Tex., and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., reintroduced the CCCA this week.

“Despite claims of increased competition, the Credit Card Competition Act would do the opposite—reducing consumer choice, weakening fraud protections, and consolidating advantages for the largest retailers,” the letter reads. “Research from the University of Miami finds small businesses would be placed at a further competitive disadvantage, with nearly all savings flowing to retailers with more than $500 million in annual sales.”

Read more at Americas Credit Unions

5 Things You Need to Know About Trump’s New Healthcare Plan

The "Great Healthcare Plan" proposes direct cash for premiums and cheaper drugs. Here is how it could impact your wallet.

President Donald Trump released a framework on Thursday, January 15, for what the White House calls “The Great Healthcare Plan.”

The proposal aims to significantly shift how Americans pay for health insurance and prescription drugs, moving away from the structure of Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage.

While the plan is currently a legislative proposal rather than signed law, its core components signal major changes for your healthcare budget if enacted by Congress.

Here are five key takeaways that could directly affect your finances.

Read more at MoneyTalkNews

California and Manhattan crackdown tighten pressure on crypto lenders

A California regulatory action is complicating plans for a crypto lender hoping to re-enter the U.S. market.

A planned U.S. return by crypto lender Nexo has run into fresh resistance in California, the country’s largest state economy and a critical market for consumer finance.

The latest enforcement action revives questions about whether past compliance failures remain an obstacle to re-entering the U.S., even as crypto firms test a more permissive regulatory climate.

For Nexo, the timing is especially awkward. The penalty concerns historical conduct, but it lands just as the firm has been signaling interest in rebuilding a U.S. footprint.

California fines Nexo $500K over unlicensed crypto loans

California’s financial regulator has fined Nexo $500,000 for issuing unlicensed crypto-backed loans to thousands of residents, citing failures to follow basic consumer lending rules.

Read more at The Street

Smith Anderson Advises on Unique $15 Billion Collateral Arrangement to Extend Acquisition Financing

Smith Anderson’s Corporate & Syndicated Finance team recently advised a major financial institution on a bespoke collateral transaction permitting the institution to pledge up to $15 billion in marketable securities as custodied collateral for an existing acquisition financing. Smith Anderson also represented the client in the initial acquisition and financing. 

The transaction was structured to offset expected turnover in the original loan collateral, which otherwise could have triggered partial prepayments prior to final maturity. With the option to pledge replacement collateral as desired, the client not only extends the effective life of its financing, but also can preserve for several years any favorable interest rate treatment. 

To reconcile the parties’ competing policy objectives and operational requirements, Smith Anderson devised a solution that provides the client with flexible, effective control of the securities collateral while providing the lender with exclusive, contractual control. 

Read more at Smith Anderson

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The IRS upped capital gains brackets: How much you can earn and still pay $0 in 2026

The IRS announced a raft of changes to tax rules for tax year 2026 on Thursday, including higher brackets for capital gains tax.

A quick reminder of how these work. If you sell an investment you hold in a taxable account for more than you paid for it, you realize a capital gain. Profits on investments you’ve held for a year or less are taxed at your regular income tax rate (the IRS announced boosts to those brackets, too).

Profits on assets you’ve held for longer than a year are subject to the long-term capital gains rate, which, depending on your income, is either 0%, 15% or 20%.

Read more at CNBC

Supplemental basic allowance for housing payments to members of the military are not taxable: IRS

WASHINGTON — The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service today confirmed that supplemental basic allowance for housing payments made to members of the uniformed services in December 2025 are not to be included in income by those who received the payments; they are not taxable.

In the One, Big, Beautiful Bill enacted last July, Congress appropriated $2.9 billion to supplement the basic allowance for housing payable to members of the uniformed services. In December, President Donald J. Trump announced that 1,450,000 military service members would receive a special “Warrior Dividend” before Christmas.

The resulting one-time supplemental payments of $1,776 made primarily to active-duty members of the uniformed services in the pay grades of O-6 and below and eligible Reserve Component members as of Nov. 30, 2025, of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Space Force were funded by this appropriation.

Federal tax law specifically excludes from gross income a “qualified military benefit.” The basic allowance for housing payments are qualified military benefits and, therefore, are not taxable.

Read more at Internal Revenue Service

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