When is a Card a Card? Roger Morris Jr., JD, CIPP Associate General Counsel Compliance Alliance A card is either a credit card or a debit card. What about a home equity line of credit (HELOC) access card? Is that a credit card or a debit card? Or something in between? If it’s in between, does Regulation E apply? Regulation Z? It is easy to talk yourself in circles, but let’s make sense of it once and for all. To begin, why is this a conversation worth having in the first place? You may know the answer to this question and think this was a compliance officer’s version of child’s play. A card’s definition as a debit or credit card has worthwhile implications. It would dictate what disclosures are necessary. In the vast alphabet soup of regulations, each has its onerous disclosure requirements, and Regulations E and Z (the two that apply in these areas) have plenty of requirements. Furthermore, it dictates how errors are resolved. Regulation E’s error dispute rules are highly consumer-favorable; not that Regulation Z’s aren’t, but Regulation E has a more formal investigation requirement. These formalities would apply if Regulation E applied to the HELOC’s access card transaction. We could go on and on about what each regulation independently entails but let’s get back to cards. 14 NEBRASKA BANKER
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