Developments in Cyberbanking

摘要

Congress and regulators, as well as state legislatures, have remained active in the electronic financial transactions arena. Of particular importance in the last year are legal developments affecting electronic transactions in the areas of stored value cards and data security. Stored value cards are one of the fastest growing products in the financial industry, and regulators and legislatures have struggled with the problem of how to protect consumers and the financial system without interfering with the development of new payment mechanisms and products. Data security has taken front and center recently as a result of several security breaches that raised questions about the effectiveness of current countermeasures and the wisdom of relying on unregulated merchants and processors to comply with industry standards in their data collection and security practices. Finally, growing concerns over "phishing" schemes and "account hijacking" are raising new questions about how best to address this risk.