News

Is fee placard legislation headed off the rails? (CORRECTION)

July 25, 2012

7/26/2012, 8:53 a.m. CDT — Correction to paragraph five: Senator Al Franken's office contacted ATM Marketplace this morning to clarify that the senator withdrew his proposed language addition and signed off on the bill on Monday. The EFTA had said it would likely withdraw its support for the bill if the language had been included.

Things have gotten a bit tricky with legislation to eliminate the ATM fee placard, which is currently under consideration by the United States Senate.

The news comes from a report issued by Dennis Ambach, legislative and regulatory council chairman for the Electronic Funds Transfer Association (EFTA), relayed to members of EFTA and the ATM Industry Association.

Following the unanimous passage of the House version of the fee placard legislation, H.R. 4367, the Senate went to work on its version of the bill, S. 3204. In committee, that bill was combined with (H.R. 4014/S. 2099), a bill concerning the Consumer Financial Protection Burea and its protection of privileged information.

The House version of the CFPB measure passed unanimously in March, but has been hung up in the Senate over issues related to CFPB structure and funding. As a means to push the bill through the Senate, banking committee chairman Tim Johnson, D-S.D., attached it to the opposition-free fee placard bill.

The bill has now acquired a new number, S. 3394, and a new source of controversy. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has proposed adding language to the combined bill that would allow the CFPB to set standards for an on-screen fee notice to be displayed before an ATM transaction begins.

The EFTA has expressed opposition to the proposed language revision in conversations with key Senate staffers. Instead of a pre-card insertion notice, the EFT favors allowing the ATM operator to identify the ATM user before giving fee notification.

This approach enables the system to display the appropriate fee notice for the card being used by the consumer. A notice prior to user identification offers no real user benefit and becomes redundant once the transaction is initiated, EFTA representatives said.

For more on this topic, visit the regulatory issues research center.

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ATM Industry Association (ATMIA)

The ATM Industry Association, founded in 1997, is a global non-profit trade association with over 10,500 members in 65 countries. The membership base covers the full range of this worldwide industry comprising over 2.2 million installed ATMs.

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