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In the past, financial institutions and FinTechs competed with one another, jostling for clients’ accounts, loyalty and debit card spending.

Times have changed, Velera Vice President of Innovation Vlad Jovanovic told PYMNTS. There’s now a collaborative mindset between traditional financial institutions, particularly credit unions, and purely digital upstarts to work together to bring financial services innovations to the masses.

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As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) anticipates a shift in its leadership with the incoming administration of President Trump, the Bureau has released a report titled “Strengthening State-Level Consumer Protections.” This report appears to be a strategic move by the CFPB to influence state-level consumer protection laws before the anticipated shift in federal regulatory policy, and the Bureau’s recommendations appear to be items that would need to be the subject of legislation, if they are to occur. As detailed below, the changes advocated by the CFPB would strengthen the position of both state regulators and private plaintiffs in actions against industry participants.

In an effort to foster innovation in financial services, the CFPB is reinstituting its programs that allow companies to obtain regulatory safe harbors through no-action letters and sandboxes to test new products and services.

The Federal Trade Commission will require web hosting company GoDaddy to implement a robust information security program to settle charges that the company failed to secure its website-hosting services against attacks that could harm its customers and visitors to the customers’ websites.

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) ordered Block, the operator of the peer-to-peer payments app Cash App, to refund and pay other redress to consumers up to $120 million and pay a penalty of $55 million into the CFPB’s victims relief fund. Block employed weak security protocols for Cash App and put its users at risk. While Block is required by law to investigate and resolve disputes about unauthorized transactions, the company’s investigations were woefully incomplete.