Fraud

CFA Joined Fellow Groups in Filing a Statement for Hearing on: What’s in Your Digital Wallet? A Review of Recent Trends in Mobile Banking and Payments

CFA joined fellow consumer groups in filing a statement for the record in connection with the Taskforce’s hearing on What’s in Your Digital Wallet? A Review of Recent Trends in Mobile Banking and Payments. The statement focuses on digital wallets such as PayPal’s Friends & Family and Venmo services and Block’s Cash App, and similar person-to-person (P2P) services like Zelle, which is used between bank accounts. There is a profound need for more consumer protection against fraud and errors in payments made through digital wallets and other peer-to-peer (P2P) services. Payment services and financial institutions must take more responsibility to protect consumers from the fraud committed on their platforms and the scammers they allow to open accounts where they can receive stolen funds. Further, the statement calls on all deposit accounts to be required to carry deposit insurance to ensure that funds are safe, including digital wallets offered by nonbank entities which hold billions in consumers’ funds on their own books without insurance.