(Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may seek to punish the bank after an investigation into its handling of Zelle payments.
“The CFPB staff has informed the firm that it is authorized to pursue a resolution of the inquiries or file an enforcement action,” the New York-based lender said in a quarterly filing Friday. “The firm is evaluating next steps, including litigation.”
US authorities have been digging into consumer complaints over how banks handle abuses on the Zelle network, which have become a hot political topic. Scams using a variety of peer-to-peer payment systems have prompted calls by regulators and lawmakers for financial firms to improve consumer protections and make victims whole.
Wells Fargo & Co. said in May that it’s also responding to formal and informal US inquiries into how it deals with customer disputes about Zelle transactions. Federal investigators haven’t publicly accused either bank of wrongdoing.
JPMorgan’s latest disclosure also increased the bank’s estimate for reasonably possible legal losses beyond reserves, boosting it to as much as $1.7 billion as of June 30 — about $300 million more than at the end of the prior quarter.
(Updates with background on US inquiries and bank’s new estimate for reasonably possible legal losses starting in the fourth paragraph.)
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