On January 14, 2025, the first part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) update to the Negative Option Rule went into effect. Negative options are contract terms that allow a seller to interpret a customer’s silence or failure to affirmatively cancel an agreement as a tacit acceptance of a renewal option—thereby creating automatically renewing contracts. While auto-renewing contracts are often intended to make subscriptions to goods and services easier and more efficient, the FTC’s stated position has been that consumers and other businesses can become “trapped” in contracts that they did not intend to renew and cannot easily cancel.

Continue Reading An Offer You Can’t Refuse: The FTC’s New “Click-to-Cancel” Rule
Department of Treasury

On February 10, 2025, Rodney E. Hood, the former Chairman of the National Credit Union Administration (“NCUA”), assumed the role of First Deputy Comptroller at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the “OCC”).  By operation of law, Mr. Hood thereby succeeded Michael J. Hsu as Acting Comptroller of the Currency under 12 U.S.C. § 4, which grants the First Deputy Comptroller the full authority of a Senate-confirmed Comptroller whenever the position is vacant.  Although President Trump nominated Jonathan Gould, a current partner at Jones Day and former chief legal officer at blockchain firm Bitfury, to serve as Comptroller, Mr. Hood now leads the OCC in an acting capacity.  Mr. Hood brings extensive experience to the role, having previously served on the NCUA Board of Directors, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Stability Oversight Council and as Vice Chairman of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.

Continue Reading Treasury Secretary Bessent Taps Rodney E. Hood to Lead the OCC

On September 24, 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law California Senate Bill 1286 (“SB 1286”).  SB 1286 will extend existing consumer debt collection protections in California to small businesses and to the collection activities of business debt.  In particular, SB 1286 is designed to expand existing prohibitions against debt collectors under the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“RFDCPA”) and, with SB 1286’s enactment, debt collectors will now also be prohibited from engaging in unfair or deceptive acts or practices when collecting covered commercial debts.

Continue Reading California Bill Aims to Expand Debt Collection Protections to Commercial Debts
Banking System
Banking System and Electronic Transfer for Business

On June 28, 2024, in an effort to bolster financial institutions’ anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (“AML/CFT”) programs, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) issued a proposed rule that would enumerate the minimum components required to be included within financial institutions’ AML/CFT programs. The types of financial institutions that would be affected by the proposed rule include banks, casinos, money services businesses, brokers-dealers, mutual funds, insurance companies, futures commission merchants and introducing brokers in commodities, operators of credit card systems and loan or finance companies. At a high level, the proposed rule would require AML/CFT programs to contain a mandatory risk assessment process and compel financial institutions to incorporate FinCEN’s government-wide AML/CFT priorities into risk-based programs. A financial institution’s risk assessment process would need to involve the identification, evaluation and documentation of its risks related to money laundering, the financing of terrorism and other illicit finance activity, based on its particular business activities (e.g., products, services, distribution channels, customers, intermediaries and geographic locations).

While FinCEN is encouraging commenters to provide input on all aspects of the proposed rule, it is specifically seeking responses to, among others, the following questions:

  1. Are there other approaches for a financial institution to identify, manage and mitigate illicit finance activity risks aside from a risk assessment process?
  2. Should a risk assessment process be required to take into account additional or different criteria or risks than those listed in the proposed rule?
  3. Should financial institutions be required to update their risk assessment using the process proposed in the rule, at a regular, specified interval (such as annually or every two years) or based on triggers such as the introduction of new products, services, distribution channels, customer categories, intermediaries or geographies?
  4. The proposed rule would require financial institutions to consider the reports they file pursuant to 31 CFR Chapter X as a component of the risk assessment process.  To what extent do financial institutions currently leverage Bank Secrecy Act reporting to identify and assess risk?  Are there additional factors that should be considered with regard to this proposed requirement?

Written comments on the proposed rule, which can be found here, must be submitted to FinCEN on or before September 1, 2024.  If you have any questions concerning the above, please contact your attorney at Vedder Price or one of the authors.

On November 7, 2023, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) proposed a rule that would allow the CFPB to supervise certain large nonbank companies that provide consumer financial services such as digital wallets and payment applications. If enacted, it would subject large technology companies handling more than five million payment transactions per year—such as Apple, Meta and Alphabet—to CFPB supervisory examinations for the first time. Under the proposed rule, these large nonbank companies would have to adhere to certain funds transfer, privacy and other federal consumer financial protection laws, including protections against unfair, deceptive and abusive practices.

Continue Reading Proposed CFPB Rule Could Subject “Big Tech” Companies to Enhanced Regulatory Scrutiny