More than two decades after its founding, The Electronic Transactions Association has registered its first lobbyist to advocate for it in Washington, D.C.
Mary Bennett, the D.C-based trade group’s government and industry relations director, is advocating on "[c]ybersecurity, privacy, payments, mobile payments, [Internal Revenue Service] reporting, intellectual property, [and] trade," according to lobbying registration paperwork filed with Congress last week. Established in 1990 as the Bankcard Services association, ETA represents more than 500 companies that provide electronic transaction processing services and products.
ETA's members include financial services companies American Express Co., Citigroup Inc., and Visa Inc., as well as tech companies Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc., and Microsoft Corp., which joined in the past year.
With these new members, ETA is trying to raise its profile in Washington, said Jason Oxman, ETA's chief executive officer.
In addition to registering a lobbyist, the organization created a political action committee earlier this month to gather campaign donations. ETA also plans to hire another government relations staffer.
"We're really ramping up our government activities," Oxman said.
ETA's policy goals include a stronger interchange system that encourages growth, the consistent application of regulations and rules, more transparency on rules and compliance information, and the protection of industry self-regulation of data-security standards, according to its website.
Cybersecurity is a top issue for the group, Oxman said.
In a July letter [PDF] to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, ETA urged lawmakers to create a federal data breach notification law. Payment processors currently have to comply with various state laws for breach notification, imposing "a significant challenge to the industry's goal of protecting all consumers against data breaches with uniform national practices," the letter says.
The group also has cautioned U.S. policymakers about creating measures that companies must implement to protect consumers' privacy. Oxman wrote in a June op-ed for Roll Call that self-regulation works for privacy protection.
"[A]lthough protecting privacy is an important goal, we must not allow government regulations to place undue burden on the payments industry and consumers who rely on electronic forms of payment every day," he wrote. "The payments industry understands the importance of protecting networks and data, and we have a long history of developing innovative solutions to ensure privacy and security in transactions."
