The organizing committee, in its first public announcement, stated: “The MSBA is a trade association focused on the non-bank money services industry, including licensed money transmitters and their agents/authorized delegates, payment card issuers and distributors, payment processors, international remittance companies, bill payment companies, mobile payment application providers, payment aggregators, virtual currency exchanges and administrators, eWallet providers and other similar money services providers that are engaged in payments“. The Key Aspects and the Initial Priorities of the Trade Group have been established and a timeline has been released for companies wanting to be part of the Founding Members and Board of Directors to step up. See the full announcement here: msbassociation.org.

Note: Due to the number of inquiries and worldwide interest, the MSBA Organizing Committee has published Enrollment Forms to be downloaded from their website. Members should use the Membership Enrollment Form: http://www.msbassociation.org/MSBA_Enrollment_Form.pdf and Associate members (Companies that provide services to the MSB industry (such as compliance consultants, accountants, and law firms) should use this form: http://msbassociation.org/MSBA_Associate_Enrollment_Form.pdf 

I have participated in the meetings and conference calls, from the initials talks with David Landsman from the NMTA, to talks where a number of concerned individuals from the industry exchanged views on the need to organize a broad industry group that represented all types of NBFIs that have been put under the same umbrella, as the states broaden the definition of “Money Transmitters” to encompass almost all Payment-related Non-Bank Financial Services. The drive and energy of Judith Rinearson from Bryan Cave who I met only this year (yes, I still can’t believe it) took the meetings to another level. In a meeting in Washington on June 25 at Bryan Cave’s beautiful Washington Offices, a group of around 30 delegates were present (with several people joining over the telephone). There were representatives from ADP, Amazon, AML Experts, Blackhawk Network, Bryan Cave, Dolex, FIDJ, Green Dot, InComm, MoneyGram, Xpress Money, Payoneer, Pillsbury, Tempus and World First.  The meeting highlighted the differences between companies and their variety of concerns, all of them expressing the needs (agreeing on the why) but having lots of concerns over the what and the how. For me it was interesting to see how a new regulation in Europe for Payment Institutions brought companies together and saw the formation of Associations in almost all countries but the fragmented US regulation that has morphed and evolved over time has in fact dismembered the industry. Five brave individuals from these meetings became volunteers for the Organizing Committee: Juan Pablo Carriedo – Tempus; Padmanabhan Markandan (Paddy) – Xpress Money; Angela Jeffers – HyperWallet; Ed Giedgowd – Green Dot and Evan Purcell – World First. Working together the group came up with the guidelines published this week.

The next steps will surely depend on the number of companies that become the Founding Members and the Board of Directors that gets formed to guide the MSBA through its initial and crucial stages. I do hope that the industry responds. I also hope suppliers of services to the industry become, like IMTC in our case, Associate Members of the MSBA, because in the end it will benefit everyone connected to the industry in any shape of form. To the question that I was asked today about the acceptance of foreign MSBs by the MSBA, I don’t have an answer although if most MSBs doing business with US firms do register with FinCEN I don’t see why not the Board would not accept out-of-the-US MSBs as members. But that is my opinion. You can send your emails with the contact form in the web and express your views. You can also contact the members of the organizing committee or Judie.