Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
By Jim Daly
@DTPaymentNews
Perhaps when he’s not tweeting, President-elect Donald J. Trump will get around to reading the letter the Electronic Transactions Association sent to him Monday outlining payments-industry proposals for Congress and federal regulators once Trump’s administration takes over in January.
“ETA encourages your administration to create a policy environment that supports the free flow of capital and ideas so that innovation can pave the way for a flourishing U.S. economy,” says the letter signed by Jason Oxman, chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based merchant-acquiring industry trade group. “We ask that your administration support the on-going efforts by the payments industry to provide opportunities for all consumers and small businesses to access and benefit from innovative financial products and services.”
The letter congratulates Trump on his Nov. 8 election victory, gives a brief description of the ETA and what its members do, and goes on to outline a number of payments-industry goals. Many such goals would need either enabling legislation or regulatory approvals. Some are specific to the payments industry and have been discussed for years, while others affect the wider business community and generally have broad industry support. They include:
• A request for a “positive policy environment” that would encourage innovation in payment technologies. Such an environment also would ensure that underserved consumers have access to the payments system, the letter says.
• A call for a federal data-breach notification law to replace the current patchwork of 40-plus state notification laws. “A single uniform data-breach law will promote efficiency and predictability if a data breach occurs,” the letter says. In related proposals, the letter calls for “appropriate federal data-security standards” for all entities to succeed the various current standards for different types of businesses. (Banks typically have to meet the toughest standards.) The letter also calls for “market-based incentives” to purchase data-breach insurance.
• Modernization of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Congress passed the TCPA 25 years ago to regulate the telemarketing industry and thwart phone-based scammers, and the Federal Communications Commission added regulations in 2013 to limit unwanted robocalls and texts to consumers. The ETA’s letter says the law needs updating “to recognize modern forms of communication. The 1991 law has been outpaced by technology, and has proven to impede business relationships including important exchange of information with customers.”
In other matters, the letter also addresses online small-business lending. Many acquirers provide access to merchant cash advances or loans for small merchants through Internet-based application systems. The letter does not make any specific legislative or regulatory proposals, but points out that technology is making “online small-dollar loans” available quickly to small businesses, “ultimately growing the economy.”
The letter also calls for reforming the tax code and restructuring of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, perhaps the most controversial creation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that Congress enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. Many business groups decry the CFPB’s leadership headed by an appointed director who is hard to remove, and budgetary structure that doesn’t rely on Congress. The ETA’s letter calls for structuring the CFPB “as a five-person board rather than a single director, as well as subjecting it to annual appropriations.”
