(Reuters) -The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has withdrawn its efforts to supervise Alphabet’s Google Payment Corp, a spokesperson for Google said on Thursday, marking a reversal of a Biden-era decision to monitor the nonbank financial platform.
The watchdog announced in December that it was ordering federal supervision of Alphabet’s payment arm, a decision the company immediately said it was challenging in court.
Google will now drop its lawsuit since the CFPB has discontinued its supervision efforts, a spokesperson for the company said in an emailed statement.
In December, the CFPB had announced the step, saying it had determined services offered by Google Payment had posed a risk to consumers.
The supervision of Google Payment would be “an unwarranted use of the Bureau’s powers and resources,” acting CFPB director Russell Vought, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, said in a May 7 memo, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported the developments.
The CFPB did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Under Biden, the CFPB had been more closely scrutinizing the growing sector of financial services provided by Silicon Valley rather than traditional banks.
In the lawsuit filed after the CFPB’s December announcement, Google Payment had said the regulator had relied on a small number of unsubstantiated complaints concerning a product it no longer offered.
“It didn’t make sense for the CFPB to supervise a product that never posed any risks and is no longer available in the U.S.,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said.
“We appreciate their common-sense decision to drop this issue.”
The company had retired the U.S. version of the Google Pay “P2P” product in June 2024 for business reasons, long before the CFPB issued its designation, according to the spokesperson.
(Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona)
