Block has provided more than $200 billion in credit to customers across its Cash App Borrow, Afterpay and Square Loans products. The company has extended credit to Americans who may be excluded from affordable credit by traditional credit systems, and it has seen strong repayment...
For millions of individuals in the U.S., exclusion from credit markets has less to do with repayment risk than with how creditworthiness has traditionally been measured. PYMNTS reported in 2025 that while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau revised its estimate of strictly “credit invisible” consumers...
The new year has dawned with consumers in the United States navigating a cooling labor market, elevated borrowing costs and persistent inflation expectations. However, a trio of data reports this week reflects a degree of financial discipline, with households adapting their cross-borrowing behavior and expectations....
Extended households have become a defining feature of U.S. consumer finance, even as they remain underrepresented in traditional financial models. PYMNTS Intelligence research shows that nearly one-third of consumers provide financial support beyond their nuclear family, including parents, siblings and nonfamily dependents, often while living...
Rising costs are no longer just squeezing household budgets. They are reshaping how different generations make financial decisions, from grocery shopping to healthcare use, according to new PYMNTS Intelligence research. The December 2025 PYMNTS Data Book, “Rising Costs and Financial Pressures Push Consumers to Adapt,” draws...
For much of the past decade, “living paycheck to paycheck” has functioned as shorthand for low wages. PYMNTS Intelligence’s research this year suggests something more complicated: a broadening spectrum of financial fragility that increasingly reaches into the middle—and, at times, higher-income—tiers. Across the monthly 2025...
Student loan borrowers are seeing increased success in discharging their loans in bankruptcy court. That’s according to a report Sunday (Dec. 28) by The New York Times (NYT), citing a study by Jason Iuliano, a professor at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of...
The U.S. Education Department is set to resume garnishing wages from student loan borrowers in default. The practice, put on hold during the pandemic, will resume early next year, according to multiple news accounts Tuesday (Dec. 23). “We expect the first notices to be sent...
Gemini Space Station affiliate Gemini Titan has made its prediction markets platform available to customers in the United States. The U.S. launch of the Gemini Predictions platform comes a week after the company received a Designated Contract Market (DCM) license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Gemini Space Station...