Mobile Checking a “Scheme” or Good for Competition?
John Berlau discusses mobile checking with One News Now:
"This week, an article in Salon calls it a scheme to prey on America's poor. AlterNet calls it a "crappy idea." John Berlau, senior fellow for finance and access to capital at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), has a different opinion.
"I will always welcome new competition, and I have said repeatedly that stores like Wal-Mart, also Home Depot and others, that had applied for the industrial lending charter, bank charter before there was a moratorium in the Bush administration, should have gotten that," he comments. "Actually, interestingly enough, Target has a bank because it was grandfathered in."
Berlau adds that Wal-Mart is not the bank here, rather Green Dot, which is federally insured. And Wal-Mart already offers prepaid cards through Green Dot.
"I think the irony is … what Wal-Mart is offering existed for the vast majority of consumers of all income levels from the mid-90s until the enactment of Dodd-Frank in 2010, and Wal-Mart was one that lobbied for these rules, specifically the Durbin Amendment that caused all these new fees," the CEI senior fellow notes."