Law and regulation

The burgeoning growth of mobile payments could become the tipping point for proposed national legislation that would force merchants to charge state sales taxes for the first time on many goods and services sold through online channels, a national tax expert tells PaymentsSource.

The Justice Department on Thursday ordered First Niagara Financial Group to sell 26 of the branches it has agreed to buy from HSBC Holdings. The branches are in the Buffalo area and have $1.6 billion of deposits.

The New York banking department has reached an agreement with Morgan Stanley to implement new mortgage servicing standards after signing a similar deal with Goldman Sachs in September.

Gruenberg says while regulators should force institutions to lower their risk of failure, having a "credible" system for winding firms down will help level the industry's playing field.

The casino industry is turning a corner, but the long-term impact of the so-called Durbin amendment on Global Cash Access Holdings Inc.’s revenues remains unclear, executives from the company told analysts during a Nov. 9 conference call to discuss third-quarter earnings.

Federal regulators have ordered 14 mortgage services to help borrowers that were harmed by foreclosure errors, but left it up to them to develop common remediation guidelines. The servicers and their consultants met in Washington this week to try and reach a consensus.

Banks should adhere to high moral standards by discouraging people from going needlessly into debt. The concept of "fly now, pay later" does not promote consumers’ financial responsibility.

The Volcker Rule, enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, has lately received a lot of adverse commentary. The complexity of the draft implementing regulation, and the clear indication in the regulators' accompanying questions that they did not know how to make the rule work, has produced a new round of criticism. But that’s only one of the problems this rule creates, and a relatively minor one.

Sandra Fisher Martins will brook no lawyerly explanations for impenetrable, convoluted writing. People have a “right to understand,” she says in a recently posted TED video.

The request by Sen. Tim Johnson serves as a rejoinder to Republicans who have been decrying the costs of new financial regulations.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has reintroduced legislation that would allow states to cap the interest rates on credit cards used by their residents.

A group of U.S. senators on Nov. 9 introduced legislation that would allow states to cap credit card interest rates, which they say are riding at “extortion” rates for some consumers.

Overdraft elephants are hiding in plain sight in bank and credit union boardrooms. No one admits seeing them. No one talks about them. The less said the better.

Sen. Richard Shelby on Wednesday called for the Senate to pass a bill that would exempt more small banks from securities registration requirements.

A bipartisan group of Senators on Wednesday introduced a bill to create a covered bond market in the U.S. similar to legislation introduced by Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J.

Policymakers who stood by and watched the mortgage bubble inflate, and then explode, ought to pay attention to what's happening in the student loan market. The parallels may not be precise, but they are pretty darn scary.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says the Internal Revenue Service made a mistake related to $253 million in disputed tax refunds that are at the center of a legal fight between the bank regulator and the bankruptcy estate of Colonial BancGroup Inc.

Sen. Carl Levin, one of the legislative architects of the Volcker Rule, took sharp issue Wednesday with how regulators are proposing to implement the measure.

It's a sign of the dismal state of the housing market that a combined $14 billion bailout in the third quarter for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac no longer merits front-page headlines.

It may take some time for the full effect of a new interchange-rate cap to affect consumer and merchant behavior, but PIN-debit network executives anticipate a positive outcome for their operations.