Creating a Safe and Secure Payments Ecosystem: ETA’s Payments Compliance Conference

ETA recently held its inaugural Payments Compliance Conference (PCC) outside Washington, DC. The two-day event provided attendees with first-hand exposure to regulators, insightful overviews of the current and pending regulatory environment, and an opportunity to network with other payments compliance professionals.

ETA plans to hold the event again next year to provide the industry with continued education about the laws and regulations that govern the payments industry and how to comply with the requirements in place to facilitate the movement of funds on behalf of their customers.

Legal and compliance professionals heard about the current compliance environment from partners at payments and fintech law firms. Senior leaders from the FTC and the CFPB discussed how regulators approach fintech and payments from an enforcement perspective.

Highlights from sessions included:

• How companies should develop a relationship with their state and federal regulators and be aware of regulatory actions to stay current on changing regulatory trends.
• Differences in state privacy laws.
• Insights on how financial sector exemptions under the CCPA and recent updates to the GLBA are making new security requirements, such as multi-factor authentication, necessary when accessing consumers’ information.
• All things payfacs and proactive ways they can stay compliant.
• Advise on staying ahead of the CFPB by conducting a “mock audit” to identify areas of potential weakness or other areas that might draw the attention of examiners.
• The importance of data security to avoid FTC or CFPB bringing an enforcement action.
• Insights into how the CFPB looks at how payment systems use their data, data harvesting, and how the use of the data could harm consumers.
• Redefinition of what a financial institution and what transactions are covered by Regulation E.
• Pending updates to tax issues impacting payment processing, including gross receipts tax and real-time sales tax proposals.
• Discussion around proposed policy frameworks for blockchain and cryptocurrencies to gain regulator certainty.
• Examination of risks include Federal AML and state money transmission, SEC, CFTC, OFAC, and advertising and consumer protection around cryptocurrencies.

ETA would like to thank the event sponsors: Gregory, Bradley, Cooley, Eversheds Sutherland, Jaffee, Paul Hastings, The Strawhecker Group, Venable, and Wiley.

If you are interested in learning more about ETA’s work around compliance issues, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Jeff Patchen at [email protected].