Law and regulation

A nationwide specialty consumer reporting agency that provides casinos credit reports used to assess customers’ eligibility for credit and check cashing will pay $150,000 to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), FTC officials said today.

A federal court today banned eight companies and their principals from selling credit repair and mortgage relief services and ordered them to pay more than $7.5 million for deceiving consumers throughout the United States.

Companies offering smartphone-enabled point-of-sale hardware and software applications are unlikely to capture business from providers of traditional wireless-payment terminals. The more likely outcome is that the two types of wireless devices will compliment each other, with the smartphone-enabled card acceptance attracting small mobile merchants that have avoided purchasing wireless terminals because of the cost, observers say.

Consumers should be allowed to use credit cards to pay for insurance products, Lee Doo-hyung, the new chairman of the Credit Finance Association of Korea, said at his inauguration conference this week.

MasterCard Canada says it plans to adopt the code of conduct for Canada’s debit and credit card industry that the country’s finance minister approved April 16. However, Visa Canada and Moneris Solutions Corp., Canada’s largest payments processor, say they need more time to study the code to determine how it affects their businesses.

An Internet-based payday lender that sold high-interest loans to consumers in Massachusetts at up to 600% interest will no longer be able to do business in the state under a settlement filed by the state's attorney general's office.

Collection law firm Friedman & Wexler LLC, Chicago, is being sued by HSBC Finance Corp. for more than $400,000 in funds that were intended to be held in trust for the bank - but are missing. HSBC hired the firm in 2005 to help it collect outstanding consumer loans. The bank paid the firm 25% of the amount collected.

The U.S. House of Representatives this morning passed H.R. 3506 by voice vote, a move ACA International has supported to eliminate unnecessary paperwork requirements under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).

National Enterprise Systems (NES) Inc., a collection agency based in Solon, Ohio, agreed to pay an estimated $400,000 to settle charges brought in a lawsuit by Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray's office.

The principal of several New York collection agencies, imprisoned this month after a conviction on gun charges, was released from custody late yesterday on a $250,000 appeal bond.

The New York Attorney General’s office has shut down a Brockport, N.Y.-based process server company that falsely claimed in legal affidavits that its employees had made proper service of legal documents to thousands of consumers.

The FBI last week announced the arrest of eight men, charged with fraudulently using other consumers' credit card information to buy as much as a million dollars in merchandise from stores in Northeast Ohio - including Home Depot, Staples, Best Buy, Lowe's, Macy's, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, hhgregg and Sears.

Consumers in March filed more than 1,000 lawsuits citing violations of consumer statutes, the bulk of which listed Fair Debt Collection Practices Act offenses. A total of 938 of 1,038 lawsuits filed cited act violations, according to data from U.S. District Court complaint dockets.

With state attorneys general pursuing a growing number of cases against debt collectors and creditors, many collection industry insiders wonder whether they’ll ever get a fair shake.

The Federal Trade Commission announced Friday that it has issued its annual report on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to Congress.

The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act has given banks less room to maneuver as they search for profits in their card portfolios. Not only are they being pinched by new regulations, their card profits are facing pressure from changing consumer behavior. Cardholders in good standing are paying down balances while delinquency rates among riskier customers rise.

A marketing company that solicits customers for automobile dealers has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it falsely told low-income and “credit-challenged” consumers that they were pre-approved for auto loans and improperly obtained their names from a consumer reporting agency.

Speakers at a recent Internal Revenue Service hearing on proposed transaction-reporting requirements that take effect next January largely focused on the potentially detrimental effects their companies may experience from a foreign-merchant rule contained within the law, according to comments from the hearing.

Limits on issuers’ ability to manage risk represent the most substantial impact from a recent credit card regulation affecting United Kingdom card issuers and cardholders, Auriemma Consulting Group UK Ltd. concludes in a recent report. The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills enacted the regulation to provide consumers with more control over their credit cards.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has filed lawsuits against two loan modification companies for engaging in nationwide foreclosure rescue scams.