CFPB is right to drop its lawsuit against Zelle
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau dropped its lawsuit in the District Court of Arizona against the owners of the payment platform Zelle.
Zelle, jointly owned by seven of the nation’s largest banks, is a popular FinTech peer-to-peer payment platform used by consumers to easy send and receive money without additional fees. The CFPB originally alleged the app has not done enough to combat payment frauds committed by scammers.
Yaël Ossowski, deputy director of the consumer advocacy group Consumer Choice Center, believes the case being dropped is the right move for consumers:
“In targeting the platform rather than punishing those who perpetuate fraud, the agency was regulating by enforcement, hoping to introduce backdoor liability for FinTech firms and payment services that hasn’t been endorsed or approved by Congress. This would have made debanking and offloading of customers even worse. The CFPB was right to drop the case.
“Payment services already employ strict anti-fraud and scam measures that allow consumers to get their money back. Using lawfare to enact new policies will result in costly and intrusive rules that will degrade the consumer experience, make it more difficult for consumers to use or even qualify for these apps, and likely create more amenable conditions for bad actors to steal,” concluded Ossowski.
The Consumer Choice Center recently launched a policy primer to evaluate legislative solutions for combatting and alleviating the harm caused by payment scams and frauds.
This primer analyzes whether liability remedies proposed in Congress would help combat consumer fraud and scams or would ultimately create unintended consequences for consumers that do not punish wrongdoers.
The primer includes key policy suggestions for legislators to help consumers avoid frauds and scams while demonstrating the errors that would come with expanded institutional liability:
- Shifting liability to financial institutions and payment apps will ultimately backfire on consumers, leading to more expansive financial surveillance, higher costs due to more compliance and reimbursements, and a generally degraded consumer experience that eradicates the advantage of popular financial tech and banks.
- Consumer financial education is the most effective way to prevent scams.
- A national privacy law fostering innovation while protecting consumers
- Stiffer penalties for individuals committing frauds and scams
The CCC represents consumers in over 100 countries across the globe. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Ottawa, Washington, Brussels, Geneva, Lima, Brasilia, and other hotspots of regulation and inform and activate consumers to fight for #ConsumerChoice. Learn more at consumerchoicecenter.org.