100 Or fewer transactions what does this include

Hi All,

A couple of questions as the law now sits:
1)As of right now Regulation E, Subpart B only applies to consumer accounts and not business accounts correct?
2) To determine if the bank meets the 100 or fewer safe harbor, does the bank only count consumer transactions or does the bank count all (consumer and business) foriegn transactions.

1) As of right now, it doesn't apply to anyone, since its effective date has been postponed until further notified. But it will only apply to consumers who request the transfers.

2) The bank counts toward the 100 safe harbor limit only the transactions that would be subject to the regulation if there were no safe harbor. In other words, Sender is a consumer, the transfer is for personal, family or household purposes, the sender or his account is in the U.S. or territories, the designated payee is a person (includes individuals, companies, trusts, and other entities) located outside the U.S. and territories or the funds will be deposited to an account that's outside the U.S. and territories.

I was told that this includes on-line bill pay and ACH transfers as well.

Has anyone else heard this?

International bill payments and IATs that your consumers originate are included.

If you are acting as the RDFI, they are not.

Thanks for confirming, Brian.

As for bill pay transactions, first determine whether they would be covered by Regulation E (subpart A). If not, they won't be covered by subpart B, either. For example, if your consumer customers' bill pay transactions result in an ACH or other electronic transfer of funds, they'll be covered under Regulation E; if they are payable to a person outside the U.S., they will be subject to subpart B. The one exception to the rule is a bill pay check that's drawn on the consumer's own account, providing you meet the limited exception discussed in Comment 30(e)-1. That exception is identical to the one for subpart A coverage described in Comment 3(b)(1)-1.vi.

BrianC,

So you're saying we count any ACH debit to customer accounts where they have made a purchase online from a foreign country?

That's not what Brian said. For example, if your customer provides a merchant in France his bank account information and permission to initiate an ACH debit to your customer's consumer account, it will not be a Foreign Remittance Transfer from your bank because your customer did not initiate it through you.

On the other hand, if your consumer customer initiates through you an ACH credit to the French merchant's account and directs that you charge your customer's account for it (or pays for it in cash), that transaction will be a Foreign Remittance Transfer because your consumer customer initiated the payment from his account to the foreign account through you.

The first example would arrive as an inbound IAT ACH debit. Inbound ACH items will never be Foreign Remittance Transfers. The second example would be an outbound IAT ACH credit. If an outbound IAT ACH credit is arranged through your bank and payment is made by a consumer for that transaction (from his account or otherwise), the ACH transaction will be a Foreign Remittance Transfer.

Thanks John,

So if customer makes purchases from foreign countries online using his debit card or paypal.... or thru our bill pay program, not covered?

If customer comes to the bank or calls and request that an ACH credit be sent as payment for the goods or services odered from foreign country, is covered?

Anywhere I can find examples or clear breakdown.

With a debit card or paypal, the customer is giving the foreign merchant the info to initiate the charge, so it is not covered.
With your Bill Pay system, the customer is instructing your institution to send a payment to a foreign country for them, so it would be covered by the new rule. For this reason, one of the first things we did was to make sure that our bill pay system would not make payments outside of the US.

Thanks tdogz

We did the same as tdogz. Make sure your bill payment doesn't allow international payments. Luckily, ours do not. I also pulled some reports that had IAT transactions on them just to verify we did not originate the transaction. Manaagment and the Board like seeing that.

I have also prepared a one page summary of why our bank is exempt from the remittance transfer rules. I give detailed info on how many international wire transfers were sent in 2012, that bill payment transactions are not allowed, etc.

We also made sure that IAT origination was turned off anywhere that could possibly create ACHs (i.e. Cash Management,etc.). I also made sure that we don't reload prepaid debit cards for customers out of the country. Basically, the only way for a customer to send money internationally through the bank is via a wire. We then updated the consumer wire forms with a box to check off if it is an international wire for personal, family or household purposes. That way bookkeeping can easily pick out qualifying wires and track them on a spreadsheet.

Good info,

Thanks

Could someone provide clarification around banks that do not exceed the 100 threshold but that use a banker's bank to send and process foreign wires that would clearly exceed this threshold. By default does the bank have to implement procedures to comply with these disclsoures, wait time, error resolution etc. because the banker's bank will be required to comply?

The bankers' bank has no compliance responsibility under subpart B unless it accepts directly from a consumer a request that it send a foreign remittance transfer. When your bank takes a request from a consumer for such a transfer, your bank is the one responsible for disclosures, error resolution, etc., regardless of the fact that you're routing the transfer through a correspondent (the bankers' bank).

You need to review your activity for 2012 and 2013 to determine whether or not you'll be able to take advantage of the safe harbor provision.

I'll be covering the Remittance Transfers rule -- including the most recent (beneficial) changes, in next Tuesday's webinar. You'll find it listed at www.bollearningconnect.com.