Sponsors (46)
The bill trades stronger, transparent protections and legal remedies to keep lawful individuals and businesses banking and using payment rails against higher compliance, litigation, regulatory costs, and potential gaps in private-sector tools for managing illicit‑activity risk.
Small businesses and law‑abiding individuals will face fewer arbitrary account closures and retain access to banking, ACH, card, and payment services that operate in their markets.
Banks and large credit unions that receive Federal Reserve or FDIC support must use documented, impartial, pre‑established, quantitative risk criteria when deciding to open or maintain accounts, increasing transparency and reducing biased decisionmaking.
Customers and businesses gain stronger enforcement tools — federal lawsuits with attorney’s fees, treble damages for prevailing plaintiffs, and OCC civil penalties — improving remedies and deterrence against unlawful denials of service.
Banks and large credit unions will incur higher compliance, monitoring, and documentation costs to implement empirical, quantitative risk‑assessment systems — costs that are likely to be passed to customers through higher fees or reduced services.
Financial institutions face increased litigation exposure and potential large monetary liability (including treble damages and attorney’s fees), creating higher legal risk and incentives to preemptively curtail products or raise prices.
Limiting banks' ability to exclude whole categories of customers could weaken a private‑sector tool for avoiding illicit or high‑fraud activity, potentially raising short‑term national security, fraud, or compliance risks if not paired with effective alternatives.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Limits large banks, credit unions, and payment networks from denying services to lawfully compliant persons for political or reputational reasons and creates private remedies and regulatory penalties.
Official title: Amend the Federal Reserve Act to prohibit certain financial service providers who deny fair access to financial services from using taxpayer funded discount window lending programs, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 4, 2025 by Kevin Cramer · Last progress February 4, 2025
Prohibits large banks, certain credit unions, and payment networks from denying financial services to persons who are complying with law based on political, reputational, or category-wide avoidance reasons. It conditions access to Federal Reserve discount window lending, FDIC insurance, the ACH network, and payment-card networks on non‑discriminatory, individualized, risk‑based decisions; creates a private right of action with treble damages and attorney's fees for violations; and authorizes civil penalties for payment networks that block lawful customers.