WASHINGTON—A senior Treasury Department official is challenging the idea that rapidly evolving financial technology will require a sweeping overhaul of rules
governing payment services and the electronic transfer of funds between consumers, banks, merchants and others.
In a recent analysis, Matt Swinehart, a senior counsel at Treasury, said a massive “regulatory rethink” of payment services won’t be required, because many rules and standards governing payments are what he called technology neutral, reported Roll Call.
According to Swinehart, government oversight of payment services is meant to protect consumers, enforce laws and keep the financial system stable. Regulators’ approach to these goals doesn’t depend on what technology is used to make payments, meaning that regulation is more “durable in the face of financial change than the conventional wisdom would predict,” he said.
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The components of moving a payment from one party to another includes as many as seven different types of services. Swinehart said a feature of payments regulation, however, is that government oversight is concerned with only two of those categories: account services, meaning who has control of the money and what rules they must follow; and settlement services, which ensures that the money properly changes hands and is accounted for, Roll Call noted.