Photo of Keith J. Barnett

Keith’s experience representing clients in the financial services industry as a litigation, compliance, regulatory, investigations (internal and regulatory), and enforcement attorney spans 20 years. Keith represents clients against government regulators (CFPB, FTC, SEC, CFTC), industry regulators (FINRA), and private litigants in federal courts, state courts, and before arbitration and administrative law panels in the financial services industry.

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.

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.

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.

September 12-14, 2023

Keith Barnett, Jason Cover, James Kim, Kim Phan, Jean Smith-Gonnell, James Stevens, Misha Tseytlin, Rich Zack, Ketan Bhirud, Carlin McCrory, and Caleb Rosenberg will be speaking on a variety of topics during the TPPPA 2023 Solving the Payments Puzzle Conference, which will be held September 12 – 14, 2023 in Washington, DC.

On July 27, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (collectively, the agencies) issued a joint notice of proposed rulemaking that would revise the capital requirements applicable to large banking organizations (those with $100 billion or more in total