Affirm announced plans to offer a debit card that will be tied to a savings account. The point-of-sale lender will also offer users the ability to buy and sell cryptocurrency directly from their savings accounts.

Square has partnered with TikTok to allow users of the social media platform to establish online stores and accept payments. TikTok For Business users will be able to set up a Square-powered online store for free.

A team of academics and economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York note the reserves held by the Fed have grown enormously since the early 2000s, apart from a decrease in 2018-2019, and now stand at an all-time high. As the Fed will likely want to normalize this once the coronavirus crisis is no longer a threat to financial stability, the team offers four strategies it could adopt to achieve the objective.

The adoption of artificial intelligence by the financial industry has reached a critical phase, and regulators need to work on assessing and precluding the risks it may bring, but many of them remain unknown, writes John Thornhill. "Regulators should be prepared to ban the use of the most exotic, or ill-designed, AI systems until we better understand how they work in the real world," Thornhill writes.

Past radical views espoused by Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden's pick to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, make her "the wrong nominee for the wrong industry in the wrong country in the wrong century," writes the Wall Street Journal editorial board. In addition to advocating a Federal Reserve takeover of private deposits, Omarova has taken a wide range of controversial positions that, if acted upon, would be punitive toward banks and damage the US financial system, they write.

The pureplay buy now, pay later operators, such as Affirm and Afterpay, should expect increased competition from banks as Mastercard's new product will allow traditional lenders to offer BNPL loans directly to customers. Banks have a unique opportunity with "second chance" consumers looking to utilize BNPL options, and with the cross-pollination of other products.

Benjamin Melnicki, formerly the chief compliance officer at Grayscale Investments, has been named CCO of Robinhood Crypto. Melnicki joins the firm as Robinhood faces heightened scrutiny from regulators.

Mary Hines Droesch will takeover as Bank of America's head of retail, preferred and small-business products, said the company. Droesch was head of Citi's US consumer unit.

Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, will likely face a difficult confirmation process in the Senate. Many banking industry groups have spoken out against Omarova's nomination, and analysts note that it will be difficult to get her confirmed. "Is this going to be an easy confirmation? Absolutely not," said Raymond James policy analyst Ed Mills.

Panelists at an industry forum say developments in the fintech and payments sectors are moving so quickly that regulators will face challenges keeping up. "Some of these [payment] products didn't exist five years ago," said Innovative Payments Association president and CEO Brian Tate. "We're in a pandemic, which strains resources, so it's much easier for regulators to focus on what they [already] know."