Category:Payment Systems

1
Australia: Payments Reform – Generational Change Coming
2
UK Regulator Ready to Take on Visa/MasterCard Payment Networks
3
UK Payments Landscape Review
4
Nebraska’s Play for a Piece of the Digital Asset Pie
5
California Imposes Additional Requirements on Money Transmitters
6
Satoshi Goes to Washington : Senator Toomey Issues RFI to Inform Digital Asset Legislation
7
New UK Insolvency Regime for Payment Institutions and Electronic Money Institutions
8
Potential Major Change for U.S. Prepaid Products: Paypal vs CFPB Court Vacates Two Significant Restrictions in CFPB’s Prepaid Account Rule
9
Good News for Fintechs: Taiwan Announces Plans to Streamline Payments Regulations
10
CSBS Rolls Out Joint Examination Initiative for Nationwide Payments Firms

Australia: Payments Reform – Generational Change Coming

By Daniel Knight and Simon Kiburg

Earlier this month the government released a raft of documents on the future of payments regulation in Australia. These documents are:

In this Blog Post we take a deeper look at some of the key proposals from the Consultation Papers and what they will mean for operators in the payments ecosystem.

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UK Regulator Ready to Take on Visa/MasterCard Payment Networks

By Judie Rinearson and Kai Zhang

The UK Payment System Regulator (“PSR”), which is becoming increasingly assertive, issued on 21 June 2022 two consultations taking a closer look at the Visa and Mastercard “schemes” in the UK.[1] The PSR proposes two market reviews: one into how Visa and Mastercard set the interchange fees; the other into how Visa and Mastercard set their scheme and processing fees. The market reviews will be conducted after the consultations close on 2 August 2022.

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UK Payments Landscape Review

By Kai Zhang

In July 2020, HM Treasury published a “Payments Landscape Review: Call for Evidence” for a strategic review of the UK payments sector. Following feedback from the industry, HM Treasury published its Response to the Call for Evidence in October 2021 which sets out a number of initiatives to ensure the payment sector stays at the “forefront” of technology and innovation.

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Nebraska’s Play for a Piece of the Digital Asset Pie

By Jeremy McLaughlin

On October 1st, Nebraska ingratiated itself to the digital asset industry when the Nebraska Financial Innovation Act (The Act) became effective. The Act offers two pathways for an entity wishing to offer certain digital asset services: a state-chartered bank may create a digital asset division or a digital asset depository may be created under a new charter.

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California Imposes Additional Requirements on Money Transmitters

By Jeremy M. McLaughlin

Under a newly-enacted law, money transmitters licensed in California must comply with new customer service requirements starting on July 1, 2022. Under the requirements, a licensee must “prominently display on its internet website a toll-free telephone number through which a customer may contact the licensee for customer service issues and receive live customer assistance.” The line must be operative at least 10 hours a day, Monday through Friday. In addition, California law currently requires a money transmitter to provide a receipt for transactions. Under the new requirements, the receipt must also provide the telephone number through which the customer may contact the licensee for customer service issues.

Satoshi Goes to Washington : Senator Toomey Issues RFI to Inform Digital Asset Legislation

By Jeremy M. McLaughlin, Judith Rinearson, and Daniel S. Cohen

As we have noted in the past, federal regulation of the digital asset/cryptocurrency/DeFi community is evolving and there are many perspectives on what direction it should take. For instance, earlier this week, the House Democratic leadership and a group of moderate House Democrats agreed to a compromise that would prevent the House of Representatives from amending the Senate-passed “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” (H.R. 3684), thereby preserving the bill’s provisions expanding the definition of “broker” under the Internal Revenue Code to apply to various digital asset market participants.

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New UK Insolvency Regime for Payment Institutions and Electronic Money Institutions

By Max Griffin, Jonathan Lawrence and Kai Zhang

A new special administration regime is being introduced in the UK for insolvent payment institutions (PIs) and electronic money institutions (EMIs).

The key purposes of the Regulations are to ensure that in the event of an institution’s insolvency (a) funds are returned to customers quickly and (b) shortfalls in the amounts returned are minimised. Since 2018, six PIs and EMIs have entered insolvency but only one has returned customer funds.

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Good News for Fintechs: Taiwan Announces Plans to Streamline Payments Regulations

By: Joseph Tseng

In an effort to promote the use of electronic payments and develop its fintech industries, Taiwan’s financial regulator has moved to combine the existing legal regime governing payment institutions and electronic money by proposing an amendment to the Act Governing Electronic Payment Institutions. The proposed amendment seeks both to cope with the disappearing line between physical cards, electronic stored-value cards and virtual, app-based services, while expanding the businesses that electronic payment institutions can do. Click here for more information.

CSBS Rolls Out Joint Examination Initiative for Nationwide Payments Firms

By Jeremy McLaughlin and Dan S. Cohen

On September 17, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) announced that at least 40 states will establish a joint examination process for “nationwide payments firms” for the 2021 examination cycle. Known as “MSB Networked Supervision,” the initiative will allow 78 licensed payments companies, including some cryptocurrency exchanges, to undergo one joint examination rather than separate examinations for each state in which they are licensed. The examinations will be conducted by a group of examiners from multiple states but led by one designated state’s regulator. To be eligible, companies must be licensed in at least 40 states. This initiative follows the “One Company, One Exam Pilot” that was completed earlier this year and is part of CSBS Vision 2020, an initiative to create “a networked system of nonbank licensing and supervision.”

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