Banking

Two former loan officers at Sterling Financial in Lancaster, Pa., have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their role in a multi-year fraud scheme that led to massive losses at Sterling.

Alliance Data Systems (ADS) has agreed to buy credit card accounts from Talbots and to take over the retailer's private-label credit card program.

With just three and a half months left until 2013, regulators are under pressure to release a boatload of new regulations, including some of the most contentious items on their plate.

The mobile financial services startup said Monday that Alex Sion, a former senior vice president of wealth management executive at Citigroup (NYSE: C) who most recently headed the financial services arm of marketing firm SapientNitro, has joined the company as president.

By linking payments to mobile phone numbers, Payfone is hoping to avoid keystrokes for in-store mobile transactions. As the firm ramps up for a pilot this fall, it's found an early merchant acquiring partner in remote payment tech firm CardinalCommerce, which potentially opens the system up to thousands of stores.

Fanatical insistence on lending to risky borrowers to get them to buy more houses destroyed trillions of dollars. Now there's pressure to make even riskier, unsecured loans to these consumers. A freer, fairer market would do better.

Creating New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp will mean one fewer thrift but allows management the chance to preserve a type of institution that is threatened with extinction.

At age one, Occupy Wall Street is smaller and no more focused than in its early days. But its protests in Lower Manhattan this week show that among some, at least, anger toward banks continues to simmer.

Citigroup (C) has added to its collateral management product, OpenCollateral, an option for automated collateral position reconciliation through Swift.

Alliance Data says it will provide private-label credit card services to the retailer Talbots. It has also acquired the $145 million in receivables associated with Talbots' private-label credit card file.

Waypoint Real Estate Group, an investment firm focused on foreclosed homes in the U.S., has secured a $65 million loan from Citigroup (NYSE:C) to buy additional properties to turn into rentals.

Echoing elements of the mortgage robo-signing controversy, investigators are looking at whether JPMorgan Chase and other banks botched the documentation and amounts owed on credit card debts they sold.

Buffalo-based M&T is offering myriad alerts and customizations of alerts, including "do not disturb" windows in which the bank should leave the customer alone.

Underserved consumers need access to high-quality small loans from financial institutions that are based on sound underwriting and include tools for budgeting and saving.

As new banking standards come into focus, the debate rages on about whether they will strengthen the financial system or merely bury it in red tape.

Quick response codes seem straightforward, but they're one more playground for cybercriminals.

Polonia Bancorp in Huntington Valley, Pa., is giving investors a chance to buy more of its stock after a planned public offering started sluggishly.

Square announced today that it has closed the Series D financing round that included Starbucks, among other investors.

BNC Bancorp in High Point, N.C., has completed its acquisition of KeySource Financial nearly 10 months after announcing the deal.

Beyond serving as the launch pad for more than 60 fintech products and services, FinovateFall, the two-day event held in Manhattan last week, got fintechies to tweet their hearts out about the presenters, their offerings and the temperature of the conference center. Here are our top 10 favorite tweets from the innovation conference: