The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will begin looking into complaints about prepaid cards – including gift cards, benefit cards, and general purpose reloadable cards – the Bureau announced Monday. Consumers can also now submit complaints about additional nonbank products, including debt settlement services, credit repair services, and pawn and title loans.
The CFPB already
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has announced a new proposal that will allow consumers the option to share a narrative of “what happened” in the CFPB’s public-facing Consumer Complaint Database. According to the CFPB, this new feature would “empower consumers to publicly voice their complaints about consumer financial products and services” and “provide important context
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit on July 14, 2014, in Atlanta federal court against a Georgia-based firm, Frederick J. Hanna & Associates, and its three principal partners for operating an alleged “debt collection lawsuit mill that uses illegal tactics to intimidate consumers into paying debts they may not owe.” The CFPB claimed
Contrary to industry expectations, the CFPB announced on Wednesday, June 11, 2014 that it would be delaying its prepaid card regulations until the end of the summer. The announcement came during a presentation by CFPB Director Richard Cordray to the Senate Banking Committee. The rule had been expected this month.
This follows a pattern of
Counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Retail Federation, and the Food Marketing Institute, among other retailers, indicated this week that they will file a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court for review of a March 2014 D.C. Circuit decision involving debit card “swipe fees.”
In 2011, the Federal
Last month, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a motion to dismiss (opinion here) in favor of a defendant credit card issuer because the plaintiff lacked standing to bring his claims. The plaintiff had received a full refund of the disputed interest charge prior to the filing of
On April 23, 2014, the parties reached a settlement in a putative class action pending in California federal court between a bank credit card issuer and consumers alleging misrepresentations and improper practices related to customer payments. The plaintiffs alleged that the bank misled consumers about how it applied credit card payments to promotional purchases by
This week, nearly 5,000 consumers will receive refund checks of $25.13 pursuant to a settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and Arizona-based telemarketing company National Card Monitor, LLC (“NCM”). According to the Commission, NCM began cold-calling consumers in early 2011 and falsely claiming that it could offer low-rate credit cards to consumers, onto which they
On April 25, 2014, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) published an enforcement order showing that Lincoln, Nebraska-based World’s Foremost Bank had agreed to pay $1 million in restitution for deceptive and unfair acts, including the charging of improper fees. The bank is the credit card arm of Sidney, Nebraska-based Cabela’s, a nationwide outdoor retailer.
On February 11, 2013, a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the argument of a class of credit cardholders that certain fees imposed by their card issuers were unconstitutional. Their class complaint alleged violations of the National Bank Act (“NBA”) and Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (“DIDMC”). The