Anyone care to comment on this? Checks exempted?

[HSB]

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A bit confused perhaps. The Act says "NO CHECKS", but the Regs could exempt checks from what Banks need to scrutinize. I won't speculate on the effect of such a regulation, but I would really welcome its formulation.

However, acceptance of checks would still be illegal, if the Site is covered by the Act.

(My other posts pretty much spell out why I do not think the "poker-only" business model is covered.)

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The confusion is due to the fact that you're talking about two things.

Accepting deposits by any method is going to be illegal and if you do it you could conceivably be extradited to the US, tried, convicted, and sent to prison for up to five years. We appreciate you taking that risk though quite frankly I think it's a pretty small one.

The regulations are going to outline the things that the banks are liable for. The stuff you want to read starts on page 231 of the bill.
the bill

This is the part that defines the policies and procedures to identify and prevent restricted transactions.

It states that the Federal Reserve and Attorney General need to come up with the policies and procedures. It says they need to come up with procedures, let the banks choose from among procedures that work, and "exempt certain restricted transactions or designated payment systems from any requirement imposed under such regulations if the Secretary and Board joinly find that it is not reasonably practical to identify and block, or otherwise prevent or prohibit the acceptance of, such transactions"

That literally means that if the Attorney General and the Federal Reserve think that it's too hard to block this stuff then nothing gets blocked.

A bank is considered in compliance with the law if they follow those regulations so if those regulations don't prohibit paper checks because it's too much of a pain in the ass to look at every damn check then no bank is going to bother trying to block paper checks. And if that happens then the sites will be able to print checks as has been mentioned in a bunch of other places.