Recent developments in private payments arrangements, particularly at the wholesale level, (including recent innovations in China) challenge central banks’ longstanding monopoly on the provision of the ultimate means of settlement for financial transactions. This paper examines competition...

This paper explores the extent to which macroprudential tools can be used to manage banking sector risks in Mongolia, a commodity producing country exposed to both procyclical and cross-sectional financial sector risks. Loose fiscal policy, rising credit activity, and heightened risk...

The U.S. dollar clearing and settlement system received little attention during the recent financial crisis, mainly because it performed reliably, processing record volumes and values of trades made in stressed financial markets. This article shows how Federal Reserve policy measures aimed at...

This article uses a class of models of money and the payments system to inform an analysis of "mobile banking" in the context of the rapid expansion of M-PESA, a new technology in Kenya that allows payments via mobile phones (even without any access to a bank account), and currently reaches...