CFPB Issues Final Remittance Rule
May 13, 2020
Authored by: Ross Handler and Benjamin Saul
On May 11, 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) announced that it will impose stricter reporting requirements on entities that process international money and remittance transfers for consumers. This final rule will take effect on July 21, 2020, replacing a temporary rule that has been in place since 2013. The new rule requires that international money transfer and remittance providers disclose the following information to consumers: exact exchange rates; the total value of transaction fees; and the amount of money expected to be received by the transfer or remittance recipient. For banks and credit unions that process large numbers of transfers, compliance costs and associated oversight policies will remain burdensome.

The new rule, however, augments the safe harbor protections afforded to certain banks and credit unions when reporting the costs of transfers and remittances to consumers. Under the temporary version of Regulation E, which was adopted in 2013, banks and credit unions that provide fewer than 500 remittances or transfers per year were permitted to estimate the costs of remittance transfers to consumers rather than providing exact transaction fees and exchange rates. Preceding the effective date of the temporary regulation, this safe harbor provision only applied to those banks and credit unions that processed fewer than 100 transfers per year. The final rule increases the transfer threshold to 500 transfers per year, making the temporary exemption permanent. In addition, the Bureau adopted a new, permanent exemption for insured institutions to “estimate the exchange rate for a remittance transfer to a particular country if, among other things, the designated recipient will receive funds in the country’s local currency and the insured institution made 1,000 or fewer remittance transfers in the prior calendar year” and the recipients received funds in the country’s local currency.