Ricketts Celebrates Senate Passage of His CRA Resolution to Overturn CFPB’s Regulatory Overreach of Consumer Payment Companies

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) celebrated Senate passage of his Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)’s latest overreach in the digital consumer payment market. The legislation would nullify the CFPB’s burdensome “Defining Larger Participants of a Market for General-Use Digital Consumer Payment Applications” rule, which took effect on January 9, 2025. Ricketts introduced the resolution last week.

“It’s great to see the Senate acting first to reverse this eleventh-hour Biden administration rule that expands the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s authority unnecessarily,” said Ricketts on the Senate floor. “This will be an early victory for President Trump. I am hopeful that the House will take up my CRA, with my Nebraska colleague Congressman Mike Flood leading, and give it a vote soon. This is an opportunity for us to ease the regulatory burden the previous administration placed on the American people. That’s what President Trump was elected to do. Now, we’re helping him deliver on his campaign promises.”

Bill text can be found here.

BACKGROUND

On November 21, 2024, the CFPB finalized a rule entitled “Defining Larger Participants of a Market for a General-Use Digital Consumer Payment Applications”— one of the Biden Administration’s many midnight rulemakings at the end of the year. Effective Jan. 9, 2025, the rule stretches CFPB’s powers to establish new supervision and examination authority over nonbank entities identified as “larger participants” in the general-use digital consumer payment applications market. These entities include payment apps, digital wallets, peer-to-peer payment apps, and other entities. “Larger participants” are entities that facilitate at least 50 million consumer payment transactions annually.

Many payment companies are already regulated at the federal and state level. Consumers are having positive experiences in engaging with these services. Despite minimal consumer complaints about payment services—accounting for only 1% of the CFPB’s 1.3 million complaints in 2023—the CFPB chose to layer additional oversight on an already well-regulated industry.

This one-size-fits-all solution in search of a problem expands CFPB’s authority without properly identifying a specific market it seeks to supervise or the risks within a specific market that pose harm to consumers that existing regulation doesn’t already mitigate. It will layer overreaching, duplicative regulation that could stifle innovation and lead to fewer services and increased costs.

Further, the cost-benefit analysis supporting the rule is insufficient, unrealistic, and notably underestimates a CFPB exam to cost just $25,001.