The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dished out a series of information-gathering orders on the business practices of major digital payments systems.
Orders were issued to Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, PayPal, and Square, the bureau said in an announcement on Thursday morning. Chinese pay systems operated by WeChat and AliPay will also be studied but are not subject to any CFBP orders.
Issued as part of the CFPB’s investigative authority, the orders are not an indication of specific wrongdoing, but they suggest the CFBP will be taking a more active role in regulating tech companies’ consumer products in the future. In particular, they are meant to root out any data collection or anti-competitive conduct that may have not yet come to light.
The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a statement, CFBP Director Rohit Chopra framed the orders as an effort to ensure tech companies were not using the power of payment processing to exploit consumers or gain an anti-competitive advantage over smaller firms.
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