Thank you so much to the Innovative Payments Association for inviting me to speak today. I should note that I’m making this presentation as a CFPB representative on behalf of the Bureau. The presentation does not constitute CFPB guidance or legal advice.
It is quite remarkable to speak to you today more than 12 years after the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act and more than a decade after the CFPB opened its doors. As you may be aware, the CFPB is the administrator and one of the chief enforcers of the federal consumer financial laws, including the Consumer Financial Protection Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Electronic Fund Transfer Act. I have had the privilege of serving at the CFPB twice now. I began before the Bureau even opened its doors as an advisor to Holly Petraeus in our Office of Servicemember Affairs, and went on to lead our student lending work. I returned in 2021 as the General Counsel and Senior Advisor to the CFPB Director.
I was especially interested in speaking to this group because of the growing significance of payments and payments-related legal and policy questions in the consumer financial ecosystem. Although the payments system has always been part of the critical infrastructure of the consumer financial marketplace, I think it’s fair to say that payments has not always been on the front page of newspapers around the globe as it is today. In the last few years, payments has...
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