Outlier Briefing: TransferWise’s head of policy Nick Catino on the CFPB’s final Remittance Rule
- The CFPB's new guidance on the Remittance Rule is a step back for transparency around pricing.
- TransferWise's Nick Catino puts it in context and charts a future that follows Europe's lead.
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently released its final rule covering remittance transfers. While the Remittance Rule requires transfer providers to generally disclose the exact exchange rate, the amount of certain fees, and the end amount expected to be delivered, it also allows certain banks and credit unions to continue to provide estimates of the exchange rate and certain fees under certain conditions.
Takeaways
- When you move money, you should know how much it costs to get from one place to another. That really isn’t the case — it’s not the industry standard.
- Consumers don’t know what they pay and that keeps fees artificially high. It costs consumers billions.
- In the CFPB’s final rule on remittances, community banks were carved out and are exempt from more explicit fee disclosures.
- Something like 80 percent of remittances go through the major banks.
- In the U.S., a lot of banks will have a zero next to the fee. As a consumer, you’re like, wow, this is great — there’s no cost to send money! And then, they jack up the exchange rate, sometimes as much as 5 percent.
- The Remittance Rule requires banks to disclose fees with money transfers but community banks and credit unions have been effectively safe harbored.
- There’s a lot of forward-thinking countries modernize their payments systems in a way that the U.S. hasn’t. There’s an opportunity here to learn from what other countries are doing.
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