U.S. MSB Daily News
USMSB.com – The Money Services Business Association (MSBA) has just passed its 10th anniversary — and it’s not celebrating with cake. It’s celebrating with a new board, a sharper policy push, and a very clear warning shot: state-by-state rulemaking is still a mess, remittance taxes keep coming back from the dead, and digital-asset oversight is no longer “somebody else’s problem.”
MSBA says its next decade will focus on state regulatory harmonization, a growing digital-assets agenda, and continued opposition to taxes on remittances and related financial products that it argues hit consumers and reduce access.
The new officers at the top
The association’s newly elected board officers are:
- Joe Massie, Board Chair (Chief Compliance Officer & Legal Counsel, Viamericas)
- Jorgen Osio Norgaard, Vice Chair (Global Head of Compliance, Alviere)
- Aurora Garza Hagan, Treasurer (MSBA)
- Justin Jenter, Secretary (CEO, Monex USA)
MSBA’s board roster is built to signal where the industry is headed: remittances and payments veterans, fintech operators, and crypto compliance talent — including executives linked to Viamericas, Payoneer, and Kraken.
MSBA’s 2025 report: the grind behind the headline
The shiny “new board” announcement lands after a rough-and-tumble year in the trenches. In its 2025 annual report, MSBA says it faced “one of the most challenging legislative seasons” in its history — and claims it successfully stopped 29+ bills across 18 states it believed would cause “significant harm to businesses and consumers.”
The association’s big-ticket state priority remains harmonization through the Money Transmission Modernization Act (MTMA) framework — including tracking MTMA activity across 31 states and working with state regulator groups to cl
And the remittance-tax fight didn’t just stay in the states. MSBA’s report describes a federal remittance-tax episode tied to a bill it calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” saying the tax was signed into law on July 4, 2025, and that to reduce the tax assessment and pressed Treasury through opposition letters.
MSBA also points to an education-heavy strategy for keeping members ready when regulators come knocking — including webinars on the State Examination System (SES) and cryptocurrency compliance, plus new cybersecurity and news-digest
Digital assets move from “side topic” to “front-page file”
If 2024 was “crypto is complicated,” MSBA’s posture in 2025 was closer to “crypto is unavoidable.”
The annual report highlights a State Policy & Digital Assets RoundtableChicago*, focused on “emerging issues” and “preparation for potential 2026 state legislation,” co-hosted with the Illinois Blockchain Association.
That dovetails with what’s happening at the federal level: the U.S. Department of the Treasury has been actively solictech-enabled crypto compliance should look like — explicitly asking about APIs, AI, digital identity verification, and blockchain monitoring.
Translation for MSBs: regulators aren’t just talking about rules — they’re talking about tooling.
How FedMSB played 2025 — and why it matters to MSBs
MSBA isn’t the only group trying to shape the next era of money movement.
The Federal Money Services Business Association (FedMSB) spent 2025 pushing a more federal-leaning, infrastructure-and-standards message — with a heavy emphasis on stablecoins and access to payment rails.
1) Definition wars
In late 2025, FedMSB published its own industry definition of “MSBs,” attempting to standardize terminology across research and policy — while emphasizing that its “industry definition” is broader than the Bank Secrecy Act / FinCEN regulatory definition.
2) A stablecoin standards platform
On Dec. 1, 2025, FedMSB announced the Stablecoin Standards Authority (SSA) — framed as a standards body aimed at technical, governance, and transparency baselines for U.S. dollar–denominated stablecoins.
3) Treasury’s crypto-compliance “blueprint,” with FedMSB weighing in
In response to Treasury’s request for comment on innovative methods to detect illicit digital-asset activity, FedMSB said it submitted a comment in August 2025.
A separate industry write-up described FedMSB’s comment as urging three quick-start ideas: a standardized “evidence API,” an AI “good-faith safe harbor” aligned to the NIST AI RMF, and privacy-preserving collaboration methods such as private set intersection.
4) The Fed’s “payment account” debate
After the Federal Reserve Board opened a request for input on a proposed “payment account” designed for limited-purpose clearing and settlement, FedMSB publicly argued that the concept doesn’t change statutory eligibility — leaving MSBs without direct Fed connectivity.
The real takeaway for 2026
MSBA’s 2025 annual report reads like a statehouse war log — bills, testimony, and harmonization mechanics — while FedMSB’s 2025 calendar leans toward federal-facing architecture: standards, definitions, and access to rails.
Either way, the pressure is moving in one direction: more scrutiny, more technical expectations, and more policy fights where MSBs can’t afford to be spectators — especially as digital assets, identity, and data-sharing become core compliance issues instead of niche talking points.
U.S. MSB Daily News
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