Tag:Payments

1
Australia: Payments Reform – Generational Change Coming
2
UK Regulator Ready to Take on Visa/MasterCard Payment Networks
3
UK Payments Landscape Review
4
The Future of Stable (Bank) Coins?: President’s Working Group on Financial Markets Urges Legislation Limiting Stablecoins to Insured Banks
5
Satoshi Goes to Washington : Senator Toomey Issues RFI to Inform Digital Asset Legislation
6
New UK Insolvency Regime for Payment Institutions and Electronic Money Institutions
7
Significant Changes are Coming: UK Payments Regulation
8
CSBS Rolls Out Joint Examination Initiative for Nationwide Payments Firms
9
Remittance Companies in CFPB’s Crosshairs
10
It’s BA-ACK! OCC planning a new fintech charter: “Payments Charter 1.0”

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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The Future of Stable (Bank) Coins?: President’s Working Group on Financial Markets Urges Legislation Limiting Stablecoins to Insured Banks

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

On 1 November 2021, the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (PWG), in conjunction with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Comptroller of the Currency, issued a long-awaited joint “Report on Stablecoins” (Report). Per the press release (and a speech by Undersecretary of Treasury Nellie Liang), the Report is intended to “identify regulatory gaps related to “payment stablecoins” (defined as stablecoins that are designed to maintain a stable value and “therefore have potential to be used as widespread means of payment”), and to present recommendations for addressing those gaps.”

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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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Significant Changes are Coming: UK Payments Regulation

By Kai Zhang, Philip Morgan, and Judie Rinearson

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) commenced, on 28 January 2021, a consultation (CP21/3) on various changes to the UK regulation of payment services and electronic money. The proposals include amendments to the substantive regulatory requirements as well as changes to the FCA guidance. Similar to an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) in the US, the consultation seeks industry and public feedback, and is fully expected to lead to formal regulation in the near future.

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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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Remittance Companies in CFPB’s Crosshairs

By Jeremy McLaughlin and Judie Rinearson

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently announced settlements with two remittance transfer providers for violations of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) and the Remittance Rule, part of the regulation that implements the EFTA—an area in which there isn’t typically much CFPB enforcement activity.

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It’s BA-ACK! OCC planning a new fintech charter: “Payments Charter 1.0”

By Judie Rinearson and Mehreen Ahmed

On June 25, 2020, Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks announced in an American Bankers Association’s podcast that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the “OCC”) is planning to introduce “Payments Charter 1.0”, which would effectively be a “national version of a state money transmission license.”

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