2017 has started off as a year of consolidation and uncertainty for the Prepaid/Stored Value industry. And it may just be the beginning of a very interesting era for payments in general. Trump campaigned on deregulation and he has already signed an executive order that instructs agencies that whenever they introduce a regulation, they must first abolish two others. While you may herald the concept the execution could add to even more uncertainty. Which regulation will be cut? While the new regulation be more onerous that ones eliminated? How do you plan for new products or enhance existing one with this type of unknown? It is enough to drive any program manager to question the viability of
Last week Western Union settled with regulators and agreed to pay $586 million to compensate fraud victims. Western Union admitted to willfully aiding and abetting wire fraud. That is quite a statement. Over the past 5 years , WU has dedicated over $200M enhancing its AML/BSA and overall compliance structure. It know as almost 20% of it's global organization focused on compliance. Can your company claim that level of investment to manage the complicated network of global regulations? And WU was still fined almost $600 million! Here is a quote from one of the state regulators involve in the settlement. “Western Union, the largest money service business in the world, has admitted to a flawed
