The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a sequence of information-gathering orders on the enterprise practices of main digital funds programs. Orders have been issued to Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, PayPal, and Square, the bureau mentioned in an announcement on Thursday morning. Chinese pay programs operated by WeChat and AliPay will even be studied however are usually not topic to any CFBP orders.

Issued as a part of the CFPB’s investigative authority, the orders are usually not a sign of particular wrongdoing, however they counsel the CFBP will probably be taking a extra lively position in regulating tech firms’ shopper merchandise sooner or later. In specific, they’re meant to root out any information assortment or anti-competitive conduct that will haven’t but come to mild.

The firms didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

In a press release, CFBP Director Rohit Chopra framed the orders as an effort to make sure tech firms weren’t utilizing the ability of cost processing to take advantage of shoppers or achieve an anti-competitive benefit over smaller corporations.

“Little is known publicly about how Big Tech companies will exploit their payments platforms,” Chopra mentioned in a press release asserting the queries. “For example, will the operators engage in invasive financial surveillance and combine the data they collect on consumers with their geolocation and browsing data?… Will the payment platforms be truly neutral, or will they use their scale to extract rents from market participants?”

Previously an FTC commissioner, Chopra labored intently with present FTC Chair Lina Khan, and the brand new investigation is supposed to harmonize with the FTC’s ongoing tech antitrust efforts.

The orders are already drawing applause from antitrust advocates, together with the American Economic Liberties challenge. “The CFPB’s orders will force Big Tech to come clean on their surveillance, data collection, and payments systems,” the group mentioned in a press release, “and provide regulators another important window in their sprawling empires.”