A U.S. House committee this week began reviewing the idea of allowing the likes of Amazon or Facebook to receive charters to operate as banks — an idea that’s already gotten plenty of pushback from traditional financial institutions (FIs).
The House committee held a hearing on the idea after Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks in July proposed a new special purpose national banking charter for payments companies.
Overseen by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the charter would allow firms like Facebook, Google or Amazon to bypass the process by which they need to collect money transmitter licenses state by state. It would instead offer payment companies a national servicing platform to replace the regime of state regulations such firms would be subject to under existing laws.
However, the banking industry doesn’t like that one bit.