On July 20, 2001 the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia sponsored a workshop on the consumer credit counseling service industry. Leading the moderated discussion were four senior executives from regional credit counseling firms associated with the National...

On October 14, 2004, the Payment Cards Center hosted a workshop led by Professor Mark Budnitz of Georgia State University School of Law. Budnitz, the author of four books and many Law Review articles on consumer payments, described how the current regime of consumer payment regulation and...

On Friday, March 21, 2003, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a one-day symposium on financial privacy entitled "Financial Privacy: Perspectives from the Payment Cards Industry." The Center invited legal scholars, federal banking regulators, and privacy...

On Friday, May 23, 2003, the Payment Cards Center hosted a workshop led by collections managers from J.P. Morgan Chase and Juniper Bank. The managers provided the credit card issuers' perspective on the consumer credit counseling industry. The day's discussion complemented an earlier workshop at...

Small payments of less than $5 have resisted the wave of electronification that has swept consumer payments in recent years. However, a number of innovations — both new technologies and new ways of doing business — have done much to make such electronic “micropayments” less expensive and...

Over the past several years, the emergence and adoption of electronic payment instruments have acutely affected check usage. This transition has been especially evident at the point of sale as debit and credit cards have become pervasive. Today, the rapid growth of online bill payment looks to...

This is the third in a series of three papers that examines the laws, regulations, and voluntary industry practices that may aid consumers who contest an electronic transaction because of error, fraud, or merchant dispute. The first two papers describe the complex web of protections available to...

This conference, sponsored by the Payment Cards Center, brought together prepaid card industry leaders and regulators to discuss how various prepaid-card systems work and the ways in which different state and federal laws can affect them. The conference featured sessions on bank- and...

Prepaid cards, also commonly referred to as stored-value cards, are typically credit card-sized pieces of plastic that contain or represent an amount of pre-loaded value. They include a wide range of payment products, such as gift cards, payroll cards, teen cards, and travel cards. Despite...