Although the cashless society that has been predicted for at least 20 years has not yet materialized, the new forms of card- and software-based electronic money may be a partial alternative to current forms of payments. This paper examines some of the factors that will influence the adoption of...

Predictions about a cashless and checkless society have been made for many years, but retail payments transactions made with electronic payment instruments still constitute only a small fraction of all payments made in the United States. This is the case despite differences in cost and despite...

President Anthony Santomero highlights the differences between U.S. and European payments infrastructure; discusses how the roots and evolution of the U.S. payments system differs from Europe’s; and outlines the likely path of the U.S. payment system and the Fed’s role in it. In the end, he...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Research Department and Payment Cards Center held a conference September 29-30, 2005 - the fourth in a series of conferences exploring new academic research on the topic of consumer credit and payments. Seven research papers covered topics such as the...

This article updates the tables originally published in an article by Loretta Mester in the March/April 2000 Business Review and subsequently updated in the Second Quarter 2006 issue.

This Asia Focus summarizes recent changes in China’s payment and settlement systems and considers how China is addressing technology and risk management concerns as it works to create a more sophisticated, international financial sector.

This paper considers the implications of a decreasing demand for cash transactions under several monetary policy regimes. A policy of nominal-interest-rate targeting implies that a secular decline in the volume of cash transactions unambiguously leads to accelerating inflation. A policy of...