The Payment Cards Center and the Community Affairs Department invited Michael Barr, University of Michigan Law School and faculty investigator for the 2005-2006 Detroit Area Study (DAS), to collaborate in organizing a conference, “Payments, Credit, and Savings: The Experience for LMI...

Following the rapid proliferation of merchant-issued prepaid gift cards, some people assumed that the added functionality available in network-branded prepaid cards would lead to similar early success for these payment vehicles. While a number of emerging applications are gaining traction,...

On January 19, 2007, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia sponsored a workshop led by Marc Abbey, managing partner at First Annapolis Consulting, to discuss the merchant-acquiring side of the payment cards industry. Abbey described the often overlooked acquiring...

Jonathan Zinman, an assistant professor of economics at Dartmouth College and a visiting scholar with the Payment Cards Center, makes a casual comparison of industry and household data sets which suggests that households underreport credit card borrowing by a factor of three. This paper offers...

This paper discusses the potential money laundering threat that prepaid cards face as they enter the mainstream of consumer payments. Over the past year, several government agencies have issued reports describing the threat to the U.S. financial system, including the use of prepaid cards by...

On January 19, 2007, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia sponsored a workshop led by Marc Abbey, managing partner at First Annapolis Consulting, to discuss the merchant-acquiring side of the payment cards industry. Abbey described the often overlooked acquiring...

On March 20, 2007, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a workshop led by Stan Paur, chairman of PULSE EFT Association LP, a Discover Financial Services LLC company, and Tony Hayes, vice president of Dove Consulting, a division of Hitachi Consulting. Paur...

Following the rapid proliferation of merchant-issued prepaid gift cards, some people assumed that the added functionality available in network-branded prepaid cards would lead to similar early success for these payment vehicles. While a number of emerging applications are gaining traction,...

This paper discusses the potential money laundering threat that prepaid cards face as they enter the mainstream of consumer payments. Over the past year, several government agencies have issued reports describing the threat to the U.S. financial system, including the use of prepaid cards by...

On October 3, 2003, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia sponsored a workshop on identity theft to examine its growing impact on participants in our payments system. Avivah Litan, vice president and research director of financial services for Gartner Inc., led the...