Managing global privacy

On May 7, 2002, Dr. Benjamin Robinson, chief privacy officer for MasterCard International, led a workshop on managing global privacy for the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Robinson described how changing business practices, industry consolidation, electronic commerce, and economic trends have positioned consumer privacy as a key issue in the financial services sector that must be managed. He discussed various privacy initiatives in other countries and compared them to the environment in the U.S. This paper summarizes the workshop discussion and is supplemented by additional research by the author.