When the owners of Benkyodo, the mochi and manju store that stood for 115 years in the heart of San Francisco’s Japantown, announced in May 2021 that they intended to close the shop and retire, newspapers and community members decried the upcoming closure as a cornerstone of the Japanese American community lost. “It was truly where folks could catch up on the latest news of the community, see old friends, and enjoy a cup of coffee at the burnt orange counter,” says Eryn Kimura, an old family fr

Sarah Gillis switched from a national bank to a local one in New Jersey as a matter of principle. “I feel like my voice matters more in a smaller bank,” says Gillis, who closed her account at a national bank because she disagreed, she says, with some of its corporate investments. She opened an account at Peapack-Gladstone Bank by her home in Warren, New Jersey, about a year ago. But when asked her thoughts on her new bank, it’s the perks and lack of fees she applauds. Her out-of-network ATM fe

On March 27th, American lawmakers passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act — more commonly known as the CARES Act. The bill was designed to help individuals, small businesses, hospitals, and other groups weather the economic storm that came with nationwide shutdowns. The package totaled $2.2 trillion in aid, and included everything from enhanced unemployment benefits to pauses on federal student loan payments. For small businesses, the CARES Act broadly provided three thing

Alexis Flores-Betancourt was 5 when her family loaded everything they owned onto a truck and trundled across country from California, where she was born, to Texas, one of several moves her parents made in search of a brighter future. That was in 2002, and in the years that followed, she recalls, life in the Lone Star State wasn't the easiest. Her father worked in construction, her mother cleaned houses. The family had to tread through life gingerly: driving carefully so as not to be pulled over

Many folks try to make a dollar out of 15 cents, but African-Americans don’t always take those nickels and dimes to a bank. More than 18% of African-Americans don’t have traditional bank accounts, compared with 7% of all Americans, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. But where banks don’t fill the bill, communities have created their own solutions, including grass roots traditions and minority-owned banks and credit unions. “People turn to the alternative forms of financing and cr

Text a question like “What’s my credit card debt?” or “How much did I spend on gas this month?” and the friendly answer comes within seconds. “Let’s see,” it begins, before listing the requested information. This is a banking chatbot, a software program that understands and responds to questions and commands about your bank account. It’s like your bank’s customer service representative — powered by artificial intelligence. This one is named MyKai and was released by artificial intelligence so

In big cities and affluent areas, banks can seem as ubiquitous as coffee chains. Making a deposit or stopping in to talk about a loan can be about as simple as grabbing a nonfat vanilla latte with an extra shot, no foam. But many Americans — those living in poor neighborhoods or in rural communities — don’t enjoy such convenience. They rely instead on costly “off-the-grid” services such as payday loans and check cashing. And plenty of others are tired of banks and would like an alternative. Wh

In snow-swept Sweden, the rise of mobile payments is making cash so sparse that some bank robbers have been left with nothing to steal. But in the U.S., that day probably won’t come anytime soon. People have been predicting the demise of cash for nearly 50 years, says David Stearns, professor of money and technology at the University of Washington. As banks began adopting computers and credit cards made their appearance half a century ago, many predicted the elimination of paper currency. "We

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released an in-depth report earlier this year that seemed just short of a climatic Armageddon. The report, released in three parts in September, March, and April, detailed the results of an extensive assessment of scientific literature on climate change in the past six years. Findings, perhaps unsurprisingly, were bleak: the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has increased by forty percent since pre-industrial times, sea levels