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Carlin McCrory

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A seasoned regulatory and compliance attorney, Carlin brings extensive experience representing financial institutions, fintechs, lenders, payment processors, neobanks, virtual currency companies, and mortgage servicers.

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This is the first of three articles focused on a key question: as bank-fintech partnerships continue to play a vital role in driving financial services, how does the industry make this system safer and better?

Fintechs and their partner banks are on edge. Regulators are concerned. But as counselors to a wide range of banks and nonbanks, we are confident that the bank-fintech partnership model is not broken. We have seen these partnerships work well — not just for clients, but for consumers and other end-users — with rigorous, risk-based controls that satisfy both the regulators and the public.

Yesterday, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (collectively, the agencies) issued a joint statement highlighting potential risks associated with banks’ arrangements with third parties to deliver bank deposit products and services. While the information is not new, it clearly memorializes the issues that have been at the forefront of recent enforcement actions involving banks operating under a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) model.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has recently issued a final rule amending its regulations governing the use of official FDIC signs and insured depository institutions’ (IDIs) advertising statements. The new rule took effect on April 1, 2024, with an extended compliance date of January 1, 2025. The extended compliance date is intended to provide sufficient time for financial institutions to put in place processes, systems, and technological updates to implement the new regulatory requirements.

In the rapidly changing world of financial services, payment processors, money transmitters, and other fintech businesses are grappling with an increase in regulatory scrutiny and consumer expectations. Troutman Pepper’s dedicated Payments team is actively engaged in addressing these challenges, providing legal support to clients throughout their business cycles.

On January 12, Fiserv announced that it filed an application with the state of Georgia for a merchant acquirer limited purpose bank (MALPB) charter. This application is a seismic development and positive sign for those in the United States pushing for more direct merchant acquirer access to the payment card networks.

As discussed here, on August 1, the two major national credit union trade associations — the National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU) and the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) — announced plans to merge and create a new organization called America’s Credit Unions. Today, CUNA announced that the organizations’ members voted overwhelmingly (94% of CUNA members and 86% of NAFCU members) in favor of the merger. America’s Credit Unions will be legally formed on January 1, 2024.

On October 17, 52 state and territorial attorneys general, in addition to state money transmission regulators, entered into settlements amounting to more than $20 million with ACI Worldwide (ACI), to resolve claims involving a money transmission error that led to the unauthorized withdrawal of $2.3 billion from Nationstar Mortgage (also known as Mr. Cooper) customers.

On September 28, Visa, Inc. announced its new dispute process aimed at combatting first-party or “friendly fraud” for card-not-present transactions. The rule change offers merchants more ways to show a disputed charge is valid and authorized. According to the press release, this change has the potential to save small businesses over a billion dollars over the next five years.

On August 1, the two major national credit union trade associations — the National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU) and the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) — announced plans to merge and create a new organization called America’s Credit Unions. The goal of the merger would be to form a single credit union trade group “to serve credit unions more efficiently and effectively” through “one strong and united voice.”