Staying informed
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has a Payments Card Center with a mission stated as follows: “to provide meaningful insights into developments in consumer credit and payments that are of interest not only to the Federal Reserve but also to the industry, other businesses, academia, policymakers, and the public at large.” The Center publishes a list of papers that are available to the public and written by “Center staff, visiting scholars, researchers affiliated with the Center, and economists in the Bank’s Research Department.”
Here are a few that I find applicable:
In July of 2007, for example, the Center published “The Merchant-Acquiring Side of the Payment Card Industry: Structure, Operations and Challenges.” For those desiring a basic understanding of credit card processing, this report will be quickly informative.
Another paper I found useful is “Payments, Credit and Savings: The Experience for LMI Households” a report on the conference in May, 2007. The paper explores the financial decisions of those who are considered a part of the United States’ 50 million low- and moderate-income households (LMI).
Also of interest to me is the article titled “General Use Prepaid Cards: The Path to Gaining Mainstream Acceptance” and also “Prepaid Cards: An Important Innovation in Financial Services.”
For those of us who considering receiving electronic payments in amounts less that $5.00, this paper “Micropayments: The Final Frontier for Electronic Consumer Payments” looks at the success stories (and failures), in both U.S. and abroad.
For all of us in the payments industry, it’s worth considering lessons to be learned from Hurricane Katrina in the article “The Role of Electronic Payments in Disaster Recovery: Providing More Than Convenience”.
The Center also summarizes and updates pending payments cards legislation, regulation, and judicial activity in legislative update section of the website. The site also has an online-searchable Consumer Payments Bibliography containing academic articles, books, reports and publications related to consumer payments. Finally a most helpful Data Dictionary providing information on relevant industry statistics. For example, you can find information or links on topics like ATM transaction volume, ATM deployment, retail e-commerce sales, Internet fraud and more.
This is a wonderful resource for staying informed about Payments.
