On April 30, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued its final rule amending subpart B of Regulation E, which implements the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, and the official interpretation to the regulation. This release modifies the final rules issued by the CFPB in February, July and August 2012.

The final rule amends the prior releases with respect to three specific issues. First, it makes optional, in certain circumstances, the requirement to disclose fees imposed by a designated recipient’s institution for transfers to the designated recipient’s account. Related to this, the final rule makes optional the requirement to disclose taxes collected by a person other than the remittance transfer provider, allowing providers to instead include disclaimers on the disclosure forms provided to senders of remittance transfers indicating that the recipient may receive less than the disclosed total due to recipient institution fees and taxes collected by entities other than the remittance transfer provider. Finally, it includes an exception with respect to error resolution regulations where a sender provides an incorrect account number or recipient institution identifier and that results in funds being deposited into the wrong account. In this case, the final rule states that the transferring bank (the remittance transfer provider) must try to get the improperly transferred money back to the customer, but that the bank is not required to compensate the customer if the funds cannot be retrieved.

The final rule is effective October 28, 2013.

For more information,  click here.