Todd Faulk
Published on: June 14, 2024
The director of a US watchdog agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), has urged the US Congress to do more to protect consumers’ financial data, citing some companies’ reported plans to monetize their customers’ transaction information. Director Rohit Chopra made the statement while testifying before the House Financial Services Committee on June 12.
Chopra reiterated the Congress’s history of improving protections for financial customers, including with the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that expanded consumers’ rights to access and control their personal data. Currently, the CFPB is working with financial institutions to standardize data-sharing practices while protecting customers’ privacy when they transfer their information to competing institutions.
Now, however, Chopra is concerned that other financial institutions are planning to surveil their customers’ transactions so they can monetize that transaction data, possibly with third parties.
The director cited reports that “large financial firms like PayPal and JPMorgan Chase are developing plans to fuel surveillance-based targeting and advertising businesses. These plans to monetize sensitive financial transaction data are a reminder that the US is slowly lurching toward more financial surveillance and even financial censorship.”
JPMorgan Chase later told Reuters that Chopra was mistaken and that Chase customers must opt in to receive shopping coupons provided by Chase.
“No transaction or other personal information is ever shared in developing these discount offers,” a Chase representative said.
Chopra also told the committee he’s concerned that companies offering buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services, such as PayPal, could leave their customers with little choice but to accept that their transaction and personal information may be sold to advertisers. PayPal did not publicly respond to Chopra’s statement.
With younger, cash-strapped consumers looking for alternatives to high-cost credit cards, the BNPL industry has exploded in size in recent years. In the US, it has grown from less than a $4 billion market in 2019 to an estimated $115 billion in 2024.
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- Source: https://www.safetydetectives.com/news/watchdog-urges-more-protection-for-consumers-data/
