WASHINGTON—CUNA and NAFCU late last week joined with other trade associations to write to Federal Reserve leadership outlining concerns with the Fed’s Secure Payments Task Force.
The Task Force was established to provide a forum for stakeholder collaboration and to advise the Federal Reserve on matters related to payments security.
“We are concerned that the efforts of the task force have been marred by an expanding scope, technical misstatements or misunderstandings, and procedural difficulties,” the letter reads, adding that the concerns have led to reduced industry confidence in the materials produced by the task force.
According to a CUNA report, the specific concerns are:
- Scope has expanded from core payments security issues to peripheral issues, non-security-related issues, and product-specific technologies and the utilization of those technologies outside their intended contexts
- Technical misstatements or misunderstandings that were not incorporated into Task Force drafts or were "voted down" in the task force process
- The procedural framework, including the voting process, which is “at best, being applied opaquely.” This had led to some task force members withdrawing from the process
“We respectfully request that the Federal Reserve board pause and review the current process and consider whether additional steps would help to ensure openness of process, and that documents produced by the Task Force reflect an accurate picture of the entire payments industry, rather than a handful of participants,” the letter reads.
Also signing the letter: American Bankers Association, Consumer Bankers Association, Electronic Transactions Association, Financial Services Roundtable and the Independent Community Bankers of America.