Consumer confidence in payment card systems has been built up over many decades. Cardholders expect to use their cards to execute payment instructions in a reliable and timely manner. Data breaches that degrade the perceived safety and reliability of payment cards may weaken consumer confidence...

This article examines the governance structure of retail payments in the United States, provides an overview of payment fraud, and discusses in depth the liability frameworks for fraud involving specific payment methods. It also presents a series of recommendations that describe how the public...

The authors highlight key issues from the presentations, keynote addresses, and open floor discussions at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's eighth annual Payments Conference. The conference's agenda appears at the end of this article.

This article compares the much anticipated but ultimately stalled smart card revolution of the 1990s with the current expansion of mobile payment platforms, and asks how mobile payments fit into the larger payment system.

At the Chicago Fed’s 2011 Payments Conference, held on May 19–20, participants discussed how changes in consumers’ behavior in the wake of the financial crisis and recession can translate into opportunities and challenges for both traditional and nascent payment providers. They also...

Immediate funds transfer (IFT) is a convenient, certain, secure, and low-cost means of electronically transferring money between bank accounts with no or minimal delay in receivers’ receipt and use of funds. Yet IFT is not widely available in the U.S. This article summarizes discussions on the...

Given the growing popularity of e-commerce and m-commerce over the past few years, remote payments have become commonplace. Unfortunately, remote payments fraud has grown in response. On September 26, 2011, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Secure Remote Payment Council (SRPc)...

This article explains how the Monetary Control Act (MCA) of 1980 paved the way for the transition away from paper to electronic check clearing and processing, ultimately leading to the successful implementation of the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21) in 2003.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago hosted its tenth annual Payments Conference, Payment Innovations in the Wake of the Financial Crisis, on May 20–21, 2010, to discuss emerging trends within the payments industry and new regulation following the financial crisis.research on health and health...