GOP Repeal of CFPB’s Big Tech Payments Rule Cleared for Trump

A CFPB rule that would’ve subjected payment apps from such companies as Apple Inc., Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to agency supervision is poised for repeal following a House vote.

The House voted 219-211 on Wednesday to repeal the CFPB’s “larger participant” rule for digital payments companies using the Congressional Review Act. The resolution (S. J. Res. 28), which the Senate passed on March 5, will now head to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign the repeal into law.

Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) and Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) led the repeal effort in their respective chambers.

The CFPB’s rule, finalized in November, is meant to allow agency examiners to review whether digital wallet providers handling at least 50 million transactions per year are complying with the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and other consumer financial protection laws.

Repealing the rule puts “non-bank payment apps in a regulatory blind spot where their actions go unsupervised and consumers are left with no recourse except to complain to a chatbot,” Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, said in a statement.

Trade groups representing Big Tech companies, including Apple, Google, and Facebook, sued to block the rule in January.

Internal Efforts

The CFPB had already begun work to dismantle the digital payments larger participant rule before Congress took action.

CFPB supervision staff were tasked with “unwinding” the rule among a small set of discrete assignments exempted from a broad stop-work order, according to a March 3 internal email from Cassandra Huggins, the CFPB’s principal deputy assistant director for supervision policy and operations, filed as part of litigation challenging the work freeze.

The CFPB included Huggins’ email in its own submission in the same litigation but blacked out the reference to the digital payments rule.

While the CFPB finalized the larger participant rule before Trump took office, it hadn’t determined which companies would be visited by agency examiners before acting Director Russell Vought was appointed in February.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB gives the agency the power to determine the largest players in financial markets, bringing them under direct oversight.

Google, Apple, Meta, and other Big Tech companies that were expected to be subject to the rule donated to Trump’s 2025 inauguration fund.

Elon Musk’s X social media platform will likely benefit from the larger participant rule’s repeal. Musk aims to make X a financial services app as well as social media hub.

The 1996 CRA allows Congress to repeal a federal regulation with simple majority votes in both chambers and the president’s signature. It also bars agencies from issuing rules that are “substantially similar” to those that are repealed, although the exact definition of what constitutes a “substantially similar” rule hasn’t been determined by any court.

The House is also voting Wednesday on a measure (S. J. Res. 18) to repeal the CFPB’s $5 overdraft fee cap.