In an article titled "Lending Alternative Hits Hurdle", Brad Stone writes for the New York Times about some recent challenges being faced by the person-to-person lending companies in the US market. Last week, Zopa announced it was exiting the US market. Yesterday, Prosper.com announced it stopped accepting new lenders pending registration of its securities with regulatory authorities. Earlier this week, Lending Club announced it had completed its registration of $600 million in securities.

On The FinanSer, Chris Skinner blogs about today's world of what he calls 'disconnected banking' - noting that bankers have 'managed to get customers out of branches and transform them into data entry clerks, who serve themselves through ATMs and the Internet.' Who's he watching instead? The social finance sites like Zopa, Prosper and more - typically dismissed by bankers as 'folly, unpractical, unregulated and untenable.'

In an article titled 'Where Either a Borrower or a Lender Can Be', Jane J. Kim writes for the Wall St. Journal about person-to-person lending networks (like Prosper.com, Lending Club.com and Zopa.com) and how small business owners are increasingly turning to those networks as access to bank credit has become more difficult.

Update: Jim Bruene gets this one right over on his NetBanker blog - it's actually about person-to-business lending!

Zopa has launched what it says is "an online community that offers unprecedented benefits to borrowers and investors, by offering safe, market rate Zopa CDs to individual investors that are linked to lowering the payments of an individual borrower’s unsecured personal loans."

In an article titled 'Online Lending Gets Easier and Safer', Jane J. Kim writes for the Wall St. Journal about Zopa's entry into the US market. Rather than doing everything itself, Zopa will be "working with several credit unions to offer person-to-person loans to prospective borrowers."

Zopa has announced that Douglas H. Dolton, formerly CEO of Chela Education Financing, has joined the company as Global CEO. In addition, Zopa has secured additional investment of $12.9 million from its venture backers, in a Series C round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

Zopa, the UK-based person-to-person lending marketplace, is celebrating its second birthday. An article in Easier Finance reports on Zopa's progress to date - more than 135,000 members have joined Zopa and, perhaps most significantly, very few Zopa members have failed to pay back their loans – Zopa’s default rate is 0.2%. More birthday celebration on the Zopa blog.

BankServ has announced that, as part of its strategy to enter the growing field of electronic person-to-person payments, it has acquired Magex Managed Payments Platform, a division of financial technology developer Magex Holdings Ltd. The Magex Managed Payments Platform division is the producer of P2P systems that let consumers exchange money over the Internet or using their mobile phones.

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.

Michael Clarke writes for the UK's ThisIsMoney.co.uk about Zopa's "zone of possible agreement" borrower/lender matchmaking service. Clarke says "Zopa claims that the service is like investing in another asset class, other than shares, property or cash, that will give a portfolio more diversification."

TowerGroup has announced new research titled "Turbulence in the Global Economy: The Case for Peer-to-Peer Online Lending Exchanges" that finds that peer-to-peer online lending exchanges -- direct lending by investors to individual borrowers -- are emerging in the US and UK as an alternative platform to traditional savings and investment options, a trend they predict will have an impact on unsuspecting financial services institutions.

In an article titled 'Will Zopa's P2P loans mean the death of the bank manager?", Tony Hallett writes from the UK for Silicon.com about Zopa's person to person lending services.

Zopa has announced a $15 million Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners and including existing investors Benchmark Capital and Wellington Partners. The additional funding will support Zopa's intended California launch.

One of the cool things about Zopa is their Zopa blog where they talk regularly about the stuff they're doing in revolutionizing the consumer finance space. We first wrote about Zopa last August.

A colleague comments on our earlier mention of Zopa:

This is, after all, exactly what happened in the U.S. to the short term corporate lending market 20 years ago, when the commercial paper marketplace took out commercial banks as the primary source of liquidity for short term corporate financing.....

Eliminate the banking middle man -- that's what Zopa's about. Rebecca Jarvis reports for Business 2.0 on what the UK's Richard Duvall is up to with Zopa.