CFPB Probes Big Tech Expansion Into Financial Sector
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today issued a series of orders to collect information on the business practices of large technology companies operating payments systems in the U.S. to better understand how these firms use personal payments data and manage data access. Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, released the following statement:
“The action taken today by the CFPB is what Americans need and expect from financial regulators. The Bureau was designed to protect us from unfair practices, especially corporate schemes that a regular person can’t possibly know are occurring, and it’s doing just that under Rohit Chopra’s leadership.
“From what we know about Big Tech firms – their untrustworthiness, their maniacal interest in surveillance at the expense of consumer privacy, their commitment to cross-fertilization among products and revenue chains – there’s every reason to worry that widespread, serious abuses will accompany their expanding involvement in the financial sector. Thank you, CFPB, for identifying and getting ahead of this issue before it emerges as the next consumer finance scandal.”