Banking

Hampton Roads Bankshares finds itself between a rock and a hard place. As a Tarp participant, it has refused to pay severance to several former executives. Several of those officers, including former CEO Jack Gibson, filed lawsuits asserting that their employment contracts preempt the Tarp prohibition.

The Bank of Birmingham in Michigan has joined an increasing group of bankers delving into equipment financing, saying it will offer financing on "most equipment types" such as manufacturing and transportation.

With their "Project Oscar" mobile payment joint venture remaining uncertain because of a regulator's investigations, major European telcos are turning to traditional payment companies to get back in the mobile payments game. MasterCard's new five-year agreement with Everything Everywhere is a case in point.

Naugatuck Valley Financial (NVSL) in Connecticut is expecting to record its third consecutive quarterly loss after writing down roughly $5.3 million on five loans during the current quarter.

The company says its new EC12 server is suited to cloud computing and enterprise data.

BB&T Insurance Services in Raleigh, N.C., has added supplemental unemployment insurance to its online product offerings.

The Portsmouth, N.H., cloud-based payment, invoice and banking company is rolling out a corporate portal application with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.

USA Technologies has added a Web service called QuickConnect, which helps developers and original equipment manufacturers use the vendor's ePort Connect platform for accepting card payments.

The North Carolina payments technology company, which gives its customers access to 30 different payment gateways, will allow its users to begin accepting payments from Dwolla this week.

Peter Humphrey is immediately retiring from the bank its holding company to spend more time with family and pursue other interests.

MasterCard continued to expand its partnerships with European telcos, announcing an exclusive, five-year agreement with Everything Everywhere to develop mobile and digital payment applications.

A breakdown of M&A announcements in the financial services industry for the week ended August 25.

Issuers should develop strategies to make their account the primary one in a consumer's existing wallet and on new payment tools offered by companies like PayPal or Square.

Fiserv has hired Ginger Schmeltzer, formerly SunTrust's senior vice president of digital channel management, to be its senior vice president of emerging payments and digital payment solutions, a newly created position.

The rate at which lenders declare credit card loans uncollectible ticked up at four of the six largest issuers in July from the previous month.

The number of open retail credit card accounts in the U.S. has reached heights not seen since the end of 2009.

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BB&T (BBT) will close 21 branches as it works to ingrate the recently acquired BankAtlantic into its operations.

S&T Bank in Indiana, Pa., has expanded its commercial loan business into northeast Ohio by opening an office in Akron.