Zopa, an online exchange for person-to-person lending and borrowing, has announced it has named Phillip J. Riese chairman of Zopa board of directors. The company also announced it has received an additional $5 million in financing from Tim Draper, founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and the Rowland Family. This adds to the $26 million previously raised from Bessemer Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital and Wellington Partners to fund the company's development.

Coinstar has announced Eddie Bauer as the latest addition to its Coin to Card program. Consumers pay no coin-counting fee when converting their loose change to a variety of nationally-branded gift cards and eCertificates at Coinstar Centers. Eddie Bauer is the first apparel eCertificate in the Coin to Card program and it is currently available at more than 6,500 Coinstar supermarket and drug store locations across the United States.

CheckFree has announced three new services powered by CashEdge. CheckFree Online Open and CheckFree Online Fund that are designed to help consumers establish and fund new accounts, in a matter of minutes. An automated decision-making engine processes the applications based on the financial institution's unique business rules for managing risk, while flagging any exceptions for manual review. CheckFree Online Transfer enables financial institutions to simplify the transfer of funds between accounts and create new revenue streams by extending their online offerings to include fee-based, intra- and inter- institution fund transfer services between accounts held at more than 23,000 banks, credit unions and brokerages.

Mercator Advisory Group has published a new report titled "Countdown To SEPA: The Clock is Ticking" that it says "provides insight into the future of the European Card market, information on the history, the current state, and the future of SEPA for the Cards project, identifies the stakeholders and examines what they need to do to become SEPA compliant in light of the consultative documents published by authorities and related parties and discusses a number of scenarios based on what we know about SEPA so far and what some of the the stakeholders have signaled to the market."

Matthew Wilde reports from Waterloo, Iowa about an initiative by the Iowa Department of Human Services and the Iowa Farm Bureau who have teamed up to help arrange for free POS terminals statewide for farmers to use to accept cards. "Total Merchant Services of Basalt, Colo. donated machines in return for 12-month service contracts on each one. The machines normally cost between $800 to $1,100. The Farm Bureau is picking up the commercial transaction fees, which will cost the farm organization tens of thousands of dollars, officials said."

Bloomberg reports on the activities of banking industry representatives pressing members of Congress to block approval of a bid by Wal-Mart to open an ILC bank. According to the article, "a coalition of 32 groups, including the American Bankers Association representing the nation's largest banks, sent a letter to every member of Congress urging them to step in before federal banking regulators act on the matter."

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