Regulation

After three weeks of contentious debate, the Senate approved landmark financial reform legislation 59 to 39 late Thursday.

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) Commissioner Jonathan Mintz this week announced new collection regulations designed to stop abusive collection tactics.

WASHINGTON — The Senate overwhelmingly rejected a measure from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse late Wednesday that would require national banks to offer credit based on the interest rate limits in cardholders' states.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit today against three national lenders and their affiliated companies for targeting members of the military by selling them high-priced electronics, then luring them into illegal credit plans.

Interchange fees are the largest component of merchant card-acceptance fees, and the merchant lobby has been waging an aggressive political campaign to get government to curb them.

WASHINGTON — Just days after the surprise passage of an amendment to regulate interchange, bankers are bracing for the possible addition of an even stronger measure that would hold them to the interest rate limit in the cardholder's state.

The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted a former supervisor at collection agency GC Services on charges she tampered with checks sent by consumers, directed them to a personal bank account and forged electronic records.

The Reserve Bank of India should set the maximum annual interest rates banks may charge their credit cardholders, a parliamentary committee is suggesting in a new report.

One of the roughly 140 proposed amendments to the financial reform legislation could have serious implications for credit card issuers, but so far the proposal does not seem to have much of a toehold.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill. on May 6 introduced three interchange-related amendments to the Senate’s financial-reform bill, prompting swift criticism from the payments industry.