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Carlin McCrory

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A seasoned regulatory and compliance attorney, Carlin brings extensive experience representing financial institutions, fintechs, lenders, payment processors, neobanks, virtual currency companies, and mortgage servicers.

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken a highly visible step into the national debate over “debanking” by sending warning letters to several large payment networks and financial services providers, reminding them that deplatforming or denying customers access to financial products or services due to political or religious beliefs could violate their existing obligations under Section 5 of the FTC Act. The FTC’s letters signal a sharpened enforcement focus on how financial services firms manage account closures, suspensions, and access to services, particularly when political or religious views are implicated.

In this episode of Payments Pros, host Carlin McCrory teams up with Hiring to Firing hosts Tracey Diamond and Emily Schifter to explore the emerging world of earned wage access (EWA), or on-demand pay, through the lens of the reality TV show Shark Tank. They examine the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s evolving approach, rapidly developing (and sometimes conflicting) state laws, and the wage-and-hour and payroll challenges that can arise when employees access their pay early. The discussion also covers how EWA can serve as a powerful recruitment and retention tool, the risk that a well-intentioned benefit can be viewed as a “loan in sheep’s clothing,” and practical steps HR and in-house counsel can take when vetting vendors or considering in-house EWA programs. Tune in to decide whether EWA is the kind of pitch your HR “sharks” should back — or one that should prompt, “And for that reason, I’m out.”

In this episode of Payments Pros, host Carlin McCrory is joined by Marissa Tartarini of Elliott Davis to explore how banks can build sustainable, scalable fintech partnerships in a shifting regulatory environment. They begin with the foundational risk questions banks should ask before choosing a partner — speed to market, in-house expertise and gaps, strategic fit, and risk appetite — then turn to practical legal and compliance considerations, including staffing, board oversight, and the need for tailored partnership agreements. Marissa and Carlin discuss the challenges of managing multiple fintech programs at once, maintaining up-to-date policies and marketing, and ensuring that growth does not outpace governance and BSA/AML controls. They highlight what separates successful programs from those that fail, lessons from terminated partnerships, and how to prepare for increasingly technical regulatory exams. Carlin and Marissa close the episode with a look at how regulators’ and banks’ views of fintech partnerships have evolved and what that means for the future of bank-fintech collaboration.

On March 11, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a new Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) to revisit its Rule Concerning the Use of Prenotification Negative Option Plans. The move follows the Eighth Circuit’s 2025 decision vacating the FTC’s 2024 amendments (discussed here), which would have imposed uniform requirements on subscriptions, auto‑renewals, and trial‑to‑pay offers across all marketing channels. The ANPRM makes clear that while the FTC acknowledges that so-called negative options are widely offered and can provide benefits to both sellers and consumers, the FTC intends to address recurring billing and cancellation frictions that continue to generate a high volume of consumer complaints.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) has delivered to Congress the report on Innovative Technologies to Counter Illicit Finance Involving Digital Assets, as required by the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. The report largely reflects the comments Treasury received about how financial institutions (including digital asset service providers (DASPs)) use technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital identity, blockchain analytics, and application programming interfaces (APIs) to detect and disrupt illicit finance involving digital assets, including payment stablecoins. The report highlights many of the challenges and frustrations that institutions are experiencing in trying to adopt these emerging technologies, and promises additional guidance in the future.

On February 11, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) released a proposed rule to implement the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (the GENIUS Act) for federally insured credit unions (FICUs). Under the proposal, credit unions cannot issue payment stablecoins directly. Instead, only NCUA‑licensed “permitted payment stablecoin issuers” (PPSIs) that are subsidiaries of FICUs would be allowed to issue payment stablecoins, and FICUs would be limited to investing only in PPSIs licensed by the NCUA.

On December 22, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) updated its Artificial Intelligence (AI) resource page to consolidate key technical and policy references for federally insured credit unions. The page sits within NCUA’s broader cybersecurity and financial technology resources and is explicitly framed as support for evaluating and performing due diligence on third‑party AI vendors. It links AI oversight back to existing NCUA guidance on third‑party relationships, including 07‑CU‑13 (Evaluating Third Party Relationships) and 01‑CU‑20 (Due Diligence Over Third Party Service Providers).

In this special crossover episode of The Crypto Exchange and Payments Pros podcasts, hosts Ethan Ostroff and Carlin McCrory, along with James Stevens, co-leader of Troutman Pepper Locke’s Financial Services Industry Group, explore the dynamic landscape of partnerships between financial institutions and digital asset firms. They discuss the increasing demand for payment enablement, highlighting how these institutions facilitate fiat currency transactions through strategic collaborations with digital asset providers.