The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has incorporated feedback from the industry and customer groups in the final changes to the remittance transfer rule that is now scheduled to take effect on Oct. 28, 2013.
While not entirely eliminating the requirement for remittance transfer providers to disclose recipient institution fees, according to commentary from
If in the previous version the CFPB-proposed revisions only covered mistakes involving incorrect account numbers, they wrote, starting in October the transfer provider would not be liable to resend or refund the funds unless the provider can show that the account number was incorrect, “reasonable means” were used to verify and deliver related information, or that before the sender paid for the transfer, the provider gave the sender notice as required by the rule “that he or she could lose the transfer amount if an incorrect account number or RII was given.”
Also, the provider must use “reasonable efforts” to recover the amount if due to an account number error the deposit of the transfer was made into the wrong account, or if an error occurred because the sender gave the provider incorrect or insufficient information.
Ballard Spahr warns the CFPB said it plans to monitor industry’s ability to verify account numbers and recipient institution identifiers and will consider modifying the exception if “it thinks such verification methods become reasonably available and are able to prevent most errors from occurring.”
