CFPB Requests Additional Information on Big Tech Payment Platforms
The CFPB reopened the comment period on a Request for Information ("RFI") issued to Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, PayPal and Square regarding how each firm uses personal payment data and manages data access (see previous coverage). Comments are due by December 7, 2022.
The CFPB posed two new questions in the RFI as to:
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the penalties assessed on users for alleged violations of the companies' acceptable use policies or any other misconduct; and
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the circumstances under which a company can suspend or otherwise restrict a user's access to its information platform.
The RFI expresses concern that the large data firms may become as powerful as Alipay and WeChat Pay, which the CFPB described as being "deeply imbedded into the lives of the Chinese public . . . [so that] consumers have little choice but to use these apps and little market power to shape how their data is used."