Photo of David L. Beam

David Beam is a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington DC office and a member of the Consumer Financial Services group. His practice encompasses a broad range of matters related to payments and credit regulation. He provides clients with regulatory compliance and related business planning advice; conducts regulatory due diligences of investment and acquisition targets; structures joint ventures and other business arrangements; obtains approvals, licenses and regulatory guidance from US federal and state financial regulators; and prepares terms and conditions for financial products and services. Additionally, he defends companies in connection with federal and state governmental audits, investigations and enforcement proceedings and assists with litigation matters, including putative class action proceedings.

Read David's full bio.

On Tuesday, August 2, 2016, at 2:00pm EDT, Mayer Brown and Paybefore.com will present a webinar on the CFPB’s actions against payment processors for allegedly facilitating illegal transactions by their clients. The presenters will be Mayer Brown attorneys David Beam, Ori Lev, and Jeremy McLaughlin, and the moderator will be Paybefore’s Evan Schuman.  The webinar

Montana is now officially the only state in the United States that does not have a law regulating money transmitters. On June 9, 2016, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed into law the South Carolina Anti-Money Laundering Act (the “Act”).  Among other things, the Act imposes licensing and other obligations on businesses engaged in money transmission.  The Act takes effect the later of one year after approval by the Governor or upon publication in the State Register of final regulations implementing the Act.
Continue Reading South Carolina Enacts Money Transmitter Law

The controversial decision in Madden v. Midland Funding, LLC, was “incorrect” and “reflects an unduly crabbed conception of [National Bank Act] preemption,” said the Solicitor General and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) in the amicus brief filed with the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday.  Still, the Solicitor General and the OCC advised the Court not to review the decision of the Second Circuit in Madden.  They concluded that this just isn’t the right case for the Court to resolve the important questions of whether and under what circumstances the National Bank Act preempts state usury laws for assignees of loans made by national banks.
Continue Reading Madden Update: Solicitor General Says the Second Circuit Got it Wrong—But that the Decision Should Still Stand for Now

Some segments of the marketplace lending business model (a subset of the growing FinTech industry sometimes referred to as peer-to-peer lending), might become subject to additional regulation if the federal and state regulatory agencies take to heart the results of a recent Treasury  Department report.
Continue Reading Treasury Department Issues Marketplace Lending Report, Outlines Possible Regulatory Path

FinCEN itself says that there’s not much new in the guidance to money services businesses that the agency released last Friday (March 11, 2016) on agent monitoring (the Guidance).1 But MSBs that rely on agents should still review the Guidance carefully. The fact that FinCEN has decided to release this Guidance now shows that