Tag: CFPB

Opening Pandora’s Regulatory Box: What to Watch for in 2019

Working in a regulatory-heavy environment can feel like being inside a washing machine at times, with the accurate forecasting of a 10-day hurricane plot. So where does fintech regulation stand at the beginning of a new year? In a state of flux as usual, it would seem.

A Payment Facilitator’s Guide to Staying Out of Regulatory Crosshairs

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have increasingly targeted actors in the payments industry—including processors and independent sales organizations (ISOs)—for allowing “bad” merchants into, or to remain in, the payments ecosystem.

Indeed, when regulators identify significant consumer injury resulting from a merchant’s deceptive practices, it is not uncommon for the merchant’s payment processor and/or ISO to be named as a codefendant in an ensuing enforcement action—along with individuals at the processor or ISO who facilitated the merchant’s processing activity.

Digital Wallets: A Deep Dive into the New CFPB Rule

Buried within the 1,689-page Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) “final rule,” or Prepaid Access Rule, are provisos that pertain to digital wallets. In a previous article, I shared the basic outlines of the rule itself and how it relates to digital payments. But how worried should payment facilitators who operate a digital wallet be?

CFBP Wants Payments Firms To Police Consumers

In a telling lawsuit, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Monday (June 6) sued processor Intercept Corp. and two of its executives for”enabling unauthorized and other illegal withdrawals from consumer accounts by their clients” and ne having “turned a blind eye to blatant warning signs of potential fraud or lawbreaking by its clients.”

This move is interesting in that it places processors—and, presumably, others in the payments arena—in the role of quasi-law-enforcement. Is a mobile carrier to blame if customers use their phones to make obscene phonecalls, sell drugs or arrange murders? Is a hardware store to blame if someone buys a hammer and uses it to attack someone?