Contact Solutions LLC provides third-party contact center support for a number of government-sponsored prepaid card programs, including U.S. Treasury's Direct Express. One of the explicit objectives of these programs is to link previously unbanked individuals with access to electronic banking...

Fraud alerts — initial fraud alerts, extended fraud alerts, and credit freezes — help protect consumers from the consequences of identity theft. At the same time, they may impose costs on lenders, credit bureaus, and, in some instances, consumers. We analyze a unique data set of anonymized...

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...

Today, prepaid cards are used in dozens of payment applications. To examine the most recent developments, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a workshop on August 22, 2011. Leading the workshop was Tim Walsh, president and chief executive officer of Ready...

Phoenix Marketing International is a top 40 Honomichl market research company that annually fields an omnibus financial services survey that collects information from a representative sample of American households. Beginning in 2012, the survey added a series of questions designed to gather data...

This paper examines consumer adoption of mobile banking and mobile payments using the experience goods and learning by doing constructs as a framework to better understand adoption patterns in the United States and how these may differ in other world markets. Consumer experience and familiarity...

Many factors influence credit-card-issuing banks' decisions about how to fund credit card loans. These factors include the size and structure of the institution, economic conditions, and the regulatory environment. Against the backdrop of a much smaller market for credit card asset-backed...

The Payment Cards Center organized a meeting at which senior officials from MasterCard shared information with Federal Reserve System payments analysts about the clearing and settlement functions that MasterCard performs for its client banks. These functions involve the transfer of information...

Start-up firm PayPerks has developed a financial capability and rewards platform that combines online education with sweepstakes-based incentives. PayPerks' initial emphasis has been on improving the understanding and use of prepaid cards among individuals with little prior experience using...

Open-loop prepaid cards are becoming a mainstream payment instrument in the United States. In addition, businesses and governments increasingly view them as a less expensive alternative to checks for disbursing payroll and benefits.There are few studies that examine how consumers actually use...