EU Debate on Payments Package Starts Nov. 19 (Nov. 18, 2014)
Debate over revised European payments legislation, including interchange reforms, is set to begin in Brussels tomorrow.
Debate over revised European payments legislation, including interchange reforms, is set to begin in Brussels tomorrow.
The securities industry is suffering from “innovatism”, a serious disease that if untreated could result in significant damage by detracting attention away from genuine business growth. At the same time, commercial pressures could force radical change in several areas of the capital markets, according to panellists at a debate hosted by Mondo Visione this week.
As Bob Dylan, famously sang, The Times, They Are A-Changin’. Once, the tools required to carry out a bank raid usually comprised a shotgun, old stockings and a bag labelled “swag”. Today, it’s a laptop, computer programming skills and patience. And the nature of the crime is changing too – previously, the goal was often to get away with a few thousand pounds, before lying low for a while. Now, the “prize” sought may be the theft of millions or the personal details of thousands, to be then sold on.
The prepaid industry was well-represented at today’s CFPB field hearing on prepaid accounts in Wilmington, Del. The consensus among industry experts was that the popularity of prepaid products continues to grow and that the NPRM is the next step in the evolution of the industry, as the rules could create a level playing field for prepaid providers.
My original intent, based on attending the field hearing in Wilmington, Del., this morning, was to summarize the key elements for publication today. But, that won’t happen. The 870 pages that comprise the NPRM suggest why it took the CFPB extra time to create and why it will take industry time to understand everything the NPRM covers and, of course, the implications of the proposed rules.
Controversy over the handling of derivatives dominated talk at the Mondo Visione Exchange Forum this week, where panellists contested the value of interoperability and whether CCP contagion might bring down the financial system.
We have the opportunity to make a difference, to be part of the process and to influence the outcome of prepaid regulations.
On the eve of the CFPB’s field hearing on GPR cards (and the rumored release of its GPR notice of proposed rulemaking), Consumer Reports has named the “best” GPR prepaid cards.
If you’re a third-party service provider to prepaid issuers, don’t overlook your Regulation E error resolution
responsibilities. Here are five topics to think about.
The Bancorp is inviting all industry representatives traveling to the CFPB field hearing on Thursday to use its complimentary workspace, which it created to make the trip more convenient and collaborative.
The U.S. Treasury and FinCen are addressing the importance of money services businesses (MSBs) to the financial system in the wake of reports that banks are refusing to do business with categories of companies, such as remittance companies and check cashers, because of the perceived risk of doing business with them following government agencies’ aggressive efforts in fighting money laundering.
The Financial Stability Board is proposing a new minimum standard for total loss-absorbing capacity, which is designed to provide confidence that systemically important global banks can absorb losses without upsetting financial stability and the wider economy.
A group of state and national merchant associations, 44 in all, sent a letter to congressional leaders today calling for the establishment of a single, national standard for notifying American consumers when businesses suffer a breach of security involving financial data or other sensitive personal information.
MasterCard Canada and Visa Canada are reducing interchange fees to an average net effective 1.5 percent rate for the next five years for consumer credit cards.
Yantra Financial Technologies, an electronic payment systems developer, has integrated its latest system for risk scoring of payments with the Ripple real-time settlement protocol. The integration means that institutions using the Ripple protocol can analyse transactions in seconds, including what other payments the customer recently made and potential concerns regarding a specific transaction. Risk levels can be assigned to certain transactions based on pre-determined criteria.
After a somewhat vague notice of its next field hearing, the CFPB updated its blog to specify that “prepaid accounts” will be the topic of the hearing, scheduled for 11 a.m. EST, Thursday, Nov. 13, in Wilmington, Del.—an exact location has not been given.
Yesterday the CFPB posted on its Website the announcement of its next field hearing, 11 a.m. EST, Thursday, Nov. 13, in Wilmington, Del.
While more than a quarter of American households still were either unbanked or underbanked last year, as was the case in 2011, the proportion of unbanked households declined to 7.7 percent or 9.6 million households, compared with 8.2 percent in 2011, according to the latest report from the FDIC.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week signed a law giving Visa and MasterCard a five-month reprieve from paying a huge security deposit for operating in Russia, according to The Moscow Times.
FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion will meet this week to discuss the results of the 2013 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households.
Finding ways to use GPR prepaid card usage data as a tool to help thin- and no-file consumers build credit has been an enticing yet elusive goal for the industry for years.
In light of the intense regulatory focus and pressure on prepaid cards, it’s time for program managers to step up and manage their own compliance to the point of being “exam-ready.”
Retailers and financial institutions struggle with costs of data breaches.
TD Bank has reached a settlement over a 2012 data breach that compromised customers’ personal information.
President Obama hours ago signed an executive order making chip-and-PIN card technology the standard for the federal government.
DOJ’s Operation Choke Point, which encourages financial institutions to scrutinize clients that process payments for certain types of businesses, continues to draw criticism from lawmakers and industry advocates, who argue that the policy is harmful to legitimate, legal businesses.
The social contract between the banking system and society is fundamentally broken. We deserve a financial system that we can all be proud of, one that is fairer and more sustainable than the current iteration.
The European Commission has introduced new rules designed to encourage investment and trigger liquidity – including the use of “high quality” securitisation. The move has been welcomed cautiously by experts, despite the controversial role of securitisation in the financial crisis.
The CFPB is gathering information about the methods banks and credit unions use to screen consumers before approving or denying them a checking account.
Financial market participants have criticised plans for the New York Stock Exchange to begin monitoring itself through its non-profit division, NYSE Regulation, describing the move as a “retrograde step” that will never work in practice. NYSE is currently monitored by FINRA, an independent organisation.
New Jersey legislation (A3480) introduced last June, which would eliminate the need to collect consumer data when purchasing GPR prepaid cards, was advanced last week by the Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee and has been referred to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
While banks want to root out fraudulent activity as much as governments do they “need to take the temperature down”, said Bob Werner, global head of financial crime compliance and group general manager at HSBC. Speaking at a panel session on trends in financial crime compliance, Werner said: “Every time something goes wrong we don’t need the scalp of a regulator or the scalp of a banker.”
The threat of banks de-risking and exiting regions and businesses in fear of sanctions-related fines is upon us, said Juan Zarate, the ex-deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism to US President George W Bush. Zarate was speaking at a Standard Chartered session yesterday morning about his new book, Treasury Wars: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.
Global financial markets are experiencing a paradigm shift as governments, regulators and participants recalibrate the processes and structures underpinning global finance. The challenge is to repair and remedy where needed, with dialogue between central banks, regulators and participants, but also to avoid creating fragmented markets or worse, unintentionally reintroducing risk.
The Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the European Union law-making body, has recommended tightening regulations regarding customer authentication and protection of sensitive payment data related to mobile wallets, according to its recently released proposal of the revised Payment Services Directive.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission will hold a public meeting next week to discuss Bitcoin and the CFTC’s jurisdiction regarding derivatives contracts that reference the decentralized digital currency.
A key payments industry group is throwing its support behind tokenization—with a few caveats as to the hurdles that remain before broad industry adoption can occur, including coordinating different tokenization models.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has determined that the CFPB must take additional measures to mitigate risk of “improper collection, use or release of consumer financial data,” according to a recently released report.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its drive to monitor and enforce the financial markets by implementing new surveillance tools to examine and inspect reconciliations. The deal comes as the US regulator charges Barclays with failing to build adequate compliance systems and the bank suffers a fine in the UK.
If you were watching 60 Minutes on Sunday night, your heart probably stopped during the story on “The Tax Refund Scam.”