| Enova CashNetUSA Bid for Grasshopper
Bank Opposed by FFW to OCC Still Silent on
WLTC
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
SOUTH
BRONX/SDNY, Jan 26 –
Amid the FDIC's bid to
eliminate public notice of and
public comment on branch
applications, the OCC is
entertaining an application by
a Enova, the parent of high
cost lender CashNetUSA, to
acquire Grasshopper Bank,
already deeply engaged in AI
banking.
On January 26
Fair Finance Watch filed:
"opposition to the
applications of Enova, parent
of the high-cost payday lender
CashNetUSA, to become a
national by seeking to acquire
Grasshopper
Bank. To
allow a payday lender already
fined by the CFPB to become a
bank would be a new
low.
"Enova used bank account
information it had purchased
from online lead generators,
overwriting the bank account
information that borrowers had
authorized Enova to use...
Enova cancelled loan
extensions it had granted to
certain consumers and in most
instances debited such
consumers’ bank accounts for
the full loan payment instead
of only a smaller loan
extension fee" etc
Now they
want (to become) a national
bank? Public hearings are
necessary. Combine this
with Grasshopper's use of
artificial intelligence in
banking - a topic not yet
scrutinize enough by the
regulators, see for example
Fifth Third and Brex, with
Brex now being acquired by
Capital One - and the need for
public hearings on this
CashNetUSA/Enova - Grasshopper
(AI) proposal is all the more
clear.
Meanwhile money
laundering settler Bunq is
applying to the OCC for a
bank, along with a higher
profile application by WLTC
also protested by FFW.
While Inner
City Press simultaneously
challenged Bunq and WLTC, by 7
pm on January 14 the OCC had
only acknowledged FFW's
comment on Bunq - nothing on
WLTC - even now on January 26,
while the comment period is
running, set to expire on
February 9 after a January 6
filing.
This as the
OCC says its reviews are
apolitical.
Or perhaps it is
just incompetence: on January
26, the OCC sent a FOIA
response: "Good morning Mr.
Lee, Your request 2026-00059-F
is a duplicate of your
previous request 2026-00045-F,
which we have already received
and are processing. As a
result, we will
administratively close the
duplicate request and continue
processing the original
request."
But the requests
are entirely different: they
are about entirely different
digital bank applications. And
still the comment periods
run...
See, e.g., Sept
10, 2025: https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/the-fdic-is-undercutting-a-key-element-of-the-cra
But now the
Federal regulator(s) blithely
propose(s) to eliminate public
notice and public comment on
banks' proposals to
expand. The above-quoted
reasoning is that few comments
are filed. So, that is now
changing.
***
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