Regulation

President Obama is widely expected to sign the banking reform act that Congress approved July 15, but practical considerations in implementing the legislation’s debit card interchange provisions could wipe out the protection lawmakers established for smaller institutions, concludes a report banking research firm Celent LLC released this month.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office announced the criminal conviction and civil settlement in a bribery case and Medicaid scam involving a collection agency and its owner.

Merchant Warehouse Inc., a Boston-based independent sales organization that offers software designed to help small retailers find the lowest-cost processing for card transactions, could benefit from Congress’ approval July 15 of the Dodd-Frank Act, says Henry Helgeson, the company’s co-CEO.

Though the Federal Reserve Board has yet to determine debit card interchange rates as mandated under the federal financial-reform bill Congress approved July 15, the decrease in annualized debit card revenue before mitigation at Bank of America Corp. could approach $2 billion starting in the third quarter of next year, Charles Noski, BofA Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, told analysts this morning during a conference call to discuss second quarter earnings (see story).

Even before President Obama has signed the landmark bank reform bill into law credit union lobbyists were moving their attention to the Federal Reserve, which the new law will direct to monitor and possibly set price caps on debit card interchange.

New York law firm Cohen & Slamowitz, which has 14 lawyers on staff, files an estimated 80,000 lawsuits each year, according to a report in the New York Times.

Federal Recovery Acceptance Inc., dba Paramount Acceptance, a Utah-based collection agency, agreed to pay $55,000 in penalties and fees for conducting unlicensed collections work in Idaho, according to the Idaho Department of Finance.

The U.S. Senate turned away the concerns of community banks, credit unions and the vast majority of Republican members Thursday afternoon to vote final passage of the financial reform bill by a vote of 60 to 39, sending the measure on for President Obama to sign into law.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate turned away the concerns of community banks, credit unions and the vast majority of Republican members this afternoon to vote final passage of the financial reform bill by a vote of 60 to 39, sending the measure on for President Obama to sign into law.

Regulatory reform survived its last significant hurdle Thursday with the Senate moving to block further changes and hold a final vote on the bill.