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.”
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Direct Express Debit MasterCard program now serves nearly one-quarter of the nation’s entire unbanked population, a recent cardholder survey confirms.
Did Canada’s Supreme Court just create a significant regulatory issue for the country’s prepaid issuers? According to at least one prominent Canadian attorney who’s following the court’s decisions, it appears quite possible—although more investigation is needed.
Mobile financial services can play an important role among a large group of American consumers. That much the Network Branded Prepaid Card Association, the FTC and consumer organizations, including U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Center for Digital Democracy, agree on.
Comerica Bank, the incumbent issuer of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Direct Express prepaid debit card program to distribute benefits to Social Security recipients, will continue in that role under a new five-year agreement, according to a blog post published today on the department’s Website.
The European Union’s Court of Justice has ruled that interchange fees charged for cross-border card payments by MasterCard were too high, bringing an end to a seven-year court battle over the fees.
Home Depot confirmed suspicions that it is the victim of a customer data breach.
The NBPCA responds to the CU report on student cards.
EY is inviting start-up tech companies to compete in a competition looking for solutions to the problems posed by “right to be forgotten” regulations.
The bailout of Espirito Santo Bank brings back unwelcome memories of the events of the last financial crisis and raises the spectre of moral hazard returning to the financial services industry both in the UK and abroad. But how far have we really come since those dark days of 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers and how far do we still have to go? A quick look at recent events gives us a good indication.
The CFPB has finalized its remittance transfer rule requiring remittance transfer providers to disclose certain third-party fees and any exchange rates applicable to the transfer.
India’s central bank now requires all card-not-present transactions for purchases within the country to be routed through a bank in India, with funds settled only in Indian currency.
The merchant groups embroiled in a long-running legal battle over debit interchange fees have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case on the grounds that the Federal Reserve improperly took into account certain costs incurred by card issuers when calculating debit interchange fee limits. However, the retailers have not challenged a separate rule governing the number of unaffiliated debit card networks that must be available for debit and prepaid card transactions, which is good news for card issuers because it gives much longed-for certainty around a challenging issue.
The Consumer Bankers Association is taking umbrage over what it says are vague allegations by the CFPB’s private education loan ombudsman regarding agreements colleges and universities have with financial institutions to provide financial products to students.
In the wake of a flood of interest in a regulatory framework for digital currency companies proposed by New York State’s Department of Financial Services, the DFS has doubled the length of the comment period to 90 days.
The financial services industry has always pursued technical supremacy. But after years of financial crisis and attempted reforms to improve the transparency and understanding of risk exposure in financial services, we seem as much in the dark as ever …
A group of merchant associations this week petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review a March decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
ACI, the foreign exchange industry body, has called for the adoption of a new Model Code for sell-side and buy-side firms on financial benchmarks, to harmonise codes of conduct and prevent a recurrence of the Libor and other recent rate fixing scandals.
Letter writing among U.S. lawmakers has been fast and furious lately as they try to influence how the U.S. Department of Education handles new rules governing universities’ and colleges’ arrangements with financial service providers that deliver financial aid dollars.
Most capital markets firms are still not using big data and even those that do often lack a concerted strategy, according to a new report commissioned by Thomson Reuters.
This summer, regulatory pressure on financial services firms has ratcheted up to unprecedented levels. Many may have breathed a sigh of relief as Dodd-Frank rule-making slowed … but the respite was only fleeting. Since July, the industry has been bombarded with 39 new consultation papers in the EU and UK alone
FinCEN is urging financial institutions to foster a culture of compliance with Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) rules and has issued an advisory explaining how basic principles can strengthen compliance within organizations.
It isn’t just complaints about prepaid card products that the CFPB is trawling for.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) on Aug. 11 posted a net loss of $2 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2014, compared with a net loss of $740 million for the same period a year ago, increasing pressure on the beleaguered organization to find new sources of revenue.
It should be no shock that the risk for banks of being caught-out for non-compliant activity has soared in recent years in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. Banks are being monitored more closely now than ever before and it’s been difficult to escape without scrutiny or a heavy reputational impact.
The CFPB is focusing on universities in the Big Ten Conference to see if these schools, some of the largest in the U.S., have appropriately disclosed their agreements with financial institutions regarding the financial products they offer their students. “Making these agreements available for all financial products shows schools’ and companies’ commitment to transparency, helping […]
MetaBank has been released from its Consent Order by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), according to an announcement by the bank’s parent company, Meta Financial Group.
Many mobile apps used for shopping don’t provide consumers with enough information before they download them to their smartphones, according to the FTC.
Paybefore typically confines discussions about state legislative and regulatory activity to the State Tracker section of Pay Gov. But after we published Pay Gov yesterday, Illinois passed a law that explicitly allows payroll cards in the state, subject to certain conditions.
Cross-border payments in the Eurozone have reached a milestone, with Aug. 1 marking the migration deadline for all credit and direct debit transfers to comply with Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) requirements.
The UK Government is to examine the potential of digital currencies as positive force in the wider economy and as a means of encouraging innovation in financial services.
