Recently enacted federal legislation contains a number of provisions that will affect the prepaid card industry. This note highlights some of these provisions, discusses how they might shape the prepaid card industry, and outlines the debate over whether prepaid cards should be defined as...

In the data, most consumer defaults on unsecured credit are informal and the lending industry devotes significant resources to debt collection. We develop a new theory of credit card lending that takes these two features into account. The two key elements of our model are moral hazard and costly...

The National Bank Act (NBA), the 140- year-old statute that led to the creation of nationally chartered banks, has likely been one of the most influential forces in the formation and development of the U.S. credit card industry. The NBA gives nationally chartered banks a wide range of powers and...

This paper describes the Federal Reserve System’s monthly estimate of revolving consumer credit as published in the G.19 statistical release. It analyzes the source data, sampling methods, and calculations on which this estimate currently relies. In addition, it proposes a framework for...

Credit Card Pricing Developments and Their Disclosure,” a January 2003 Payment Cards Center Discussion Paper, examined the history and dynamics of credit card pricing and how such pricing is described to consumers in Truth in Lending solicitation disclosures. In this paper, we examine credit...

On May 22, 2001, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia sponsored a workshop on the role of interchange fees in the credit card industry. The workshop discussion, led by Dr. David Humphrey of Florida State University, explored the framework behind interchange fees....

On July 31, 2001, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a workshop that examined current credit risk management practices in the consumer credit industry. The session was led by Jeffrey Bower, senior manager in KPMG Consulting’s financial services...

On November 16, 2001, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia sponsored a workshop on fraud management in the credit card industry. Daniel Buttafogo and Larry Drexler of Juniper Bank led the discussion. Daniel Buttafogo, Director-Risk Management, is Juniper's fraud...

Jonathan Zinman, an assistant professor of economics at Dartmouth College and a visiting scholar with the Payment Cards Center, makes a casual comparison of industry and household data sets which suggests that households underreport credit card borrowing by a factor of three. This paper offers...

This paper analyzes the potential competitive effects of the proposed bifurcated application of Basel II capital regulations in the United States on bank credit card lending activities. For this purpose, the authors consider the Basel II regulations as stated in the June 2004 Basel Committee...