Apple Pay, Cash App, PayPal and other apps to be treated more like banks

In Brief

Some digital services look like banks, act like banks, but aren’t banks — meaning they can, for instance, close down your account without notice. Or be difficult to contact when you want to dispute fraud.

This is about to change: the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has just ruled that all digital services that handle a significant number of transactions should be subject to bank-like supervision. The government agency will gain new powers around incorrect transactions, fraudulent activity, data privacy, and more.

Who will be subject to the new rule? Quite a few companies as the CFPB is targeting payment wallets and money transfer apps that handle more than 50 million transactions per year. Which means Apple Pay, Cash App, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo…

While a significant change, the new rule won’t mark the end of crypto scams on social networks as the CFPB has decided to limit its scope to transactions conducted in USD.

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