By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writer
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is dropping its lawsuit against the company that runs the Zelle payment platform and three U.S. banks as federal agencies continue to pull back on previous enforcement actions now that President Donald Trump is back in office.
In December a federal regulator sued JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, claiming the banks failed to protect hundreds of thousands of consumers from rampant fraud on Zelle, in violation of consumer financial laws.
In the federal civil complaint, the CFPB asserted that the banks rushed to get the peer-to-peer payments platform to market without effective safeguards against fraud and then, after consumers complained about being defrauded on the service, largely denied them relief.
Early Warning Services, a fintech company based in Scottsdale, Arizona, that operates Zelle, was named as a defendant in the lawsuit. EWS is owned by seven U.S. banks, including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Those three banks are the largest financial institutions on the Zelle network, accounting for 73% of activity on Zelle in 2023.
But a filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on Tuesday indicated that the CFPB was dismissing its lawsuit against EWS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo with prejudice.
The dismissal comes less than a week after the CFPB dropped several enforcement actions against companies like Capital One and Rocket Homes.
In notices of voluntary dismissals that were filed, the CFPB dropped lawsuits it had brought against Capital One, Rocket Homes, Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and others.
Those suits were all filed under the agency’s previous director, Rohit Chopra, who Trump fired just weeks ago. The CPFB has since plunged into turmoil — with the White House later ordering it to halt nearly all its work. The administration also closed the agency’s headquarters and moved to fire scores of its workers.
Trump has defended his administration’s broadside against the CFPB — including recent claims about the agency being “set up to destroy people.” But supporters of the agency stress that it provides crucial oversight and protects consumers from being vulnerable to predatory business practices.
The CPFB isn’t the only federal agency to signal a pullback on previous enforcement action under the new administration. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has either closed or paused legal action against several cryptocurrency platforms in recent weeks, as the regulator tries to present itself as more crypto-friendly under Trump.
Last month Binance and the SEC filed a joint motion to pause its high-profile lawsuit against the crypto exchange. The SEC filed a similar joint motion with Coinbase. In addition, Robinhood has said that the case against it has been closed.