The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has postponed the due date for comments on it recent guidance about deposit-related credit products.

The action is notable because it pushes the rule-making process off until after the start of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB has said that it intends to play (more…)

Wells Fargo has dropped the fees for its Direct Deposit Advance line of credit.

The Direct Deposit Advance is a short-term cash advance available to Well’s checking account customers (in good standing) in about 15 states.

Wells charges $1.50 for every $20 increment that a customer is (more…)

First, the OCC has clarified that the June 8th guidance from the OCC (“Deposit-Related Consumer Credit Products“) is intended only for debit cards attached to a traditional deposit account.

Prepaid is not covered by this guidance. Still, a person at the OCC intimated that a similar guidance is forthcoming for prepaid debit cards. (more…)

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a proposed rule that will allow credit products to return to debit cards.

I have suspected that the credit issue was far from resolved. The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) issued a directive last fall that forced MetaBank to pull its i-advance product. I-advance was a short-term credit product offered to customers that attached a regular direct deposit to their debit cards. The costs were (more…)

People have a lot of questions about the OCC’s directive to make HSBC end their Settlement Products Agreement with H&R Block.

Here are a few:

• Why did the OCC do it?
• Will the FDIC do the same thing?
• Will H&R Block be able to come up with a substitute means of helping their customers settle the cost of their tax preparation fees?

HSBC reports that the OCC required them to terminate their contract, known as the HSBC Settlement Products Program, on Christmas Eve. Block’s 8-K reports that the OCC directive required HSBC to immediately stop providing any form of refund anticipation loans and refund (more…)