Banking

Amazon.com Inc. today announced plans for Amazon Coins, a virtual currency for its Kindle Fire tablet.

Police and Fire Federal Credit Union will continue to use the Star ATM network run by First Data.

Naugatuck Valley Financial in Connecticut has added Orville Aarons as a director. Aarons is president of O. Aarons & Co., an investment bank, and had been a chief lending officer at The Community's Bank.

VeriFone Systems Inc. said Chief Executive Officer Douglas Bergeron’s trading was the subject of inquiries by the U.S. Attorney and Securities and Exchange Commission, which ended their probes without action.

Local merchants, especially those with credit card minimums, may find a small surcharge improves customer service. Alternately, all retailers should consider product-level surcharging, with fees only for high-cost cards.

LOS ANGELES -- The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit last night against Standard & Poor's, alleging the firm ignored its own standards to give high ratings to mortgage bonds sold to WesCorp FCU and other investors that created billions of dollars of losses.

Loss mitigation strategies for the payments business are getting a technology makeover that includes the same kind of emerging analysis used to attract consumers in the first place.

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. – American Southwest CU held a grand opening for its expanded offices, a two-story addition to its original building, adding 14,000 square feet of new space.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – Redevelopment funded in part by tax dollars will clean a significant chunk of pollution at an old gas station site where Traverse Bay Area CU is building a new headquarters.

Kind words by Stewart McClure, the head of Somerset Hills Bancorp, for Kevin Cummings, the CEO of rival Investors Bancorp, are part of a mutual admiration society budding in New Jersey banking.

Security software company SSH makes software that protects access keys that let computers access other computers; it now is compatible with some IBM enterprise servers.

Orrstown Financial Services (ORRF) reached a legal settlement with PL Capital over a requirement that the outside investor said wrongly benefited management.

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty said Monday that a U.S. Bancorp unit is a lender to Huntingdon Life Sciences, a U.K.-based research facility that helps makers of pharmaceuticals, chemicals, cosmetics and other products assess the safety of their wares.

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Cyberhacktivist group Anonymous has divulged bankers' online banking credentials in retaliation for the Justice Department's prosecution of hacker Aaron Swartz.

The online giant's prepaid card will be usable at four large retailers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to be inundated with comments on how to rework the proposed 3% cap on loan origination points and fees.

The ABA is raising concerns about a credit union's potential plans to change its field of membership from just Lutherans to serve all Christian denominations.

Terminations of bank deals have dramatically slowed since 2009, when a third of the announced deals were called off. Still, buyers should give regulators a heads-up and leave ample time to finalize details.

To give banks a competitive edge over companies like PayPal, Apple and Google Wallet, two-year-old Sionic Mobile released its mobile commerce platform to financial institutions today.