The Center co-sponsored this conference with the Community Affairs Department and the Electronic Funds Transfer Association’s EBT Industry Council. The purpose of the conference was to provide a forum for community, banking, and payment industry leaders on the future of EBT. The sessions...

On June 20 and 21, 2005, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, in conjunction with the Electronic Funds Transfer Association (EFTA), hosted a day-and-a-half forum, “Risky Business: Managing Electronic Payments in the 21st Century.” The Center and EFTA invited...

On June 10, 2005, the Payment Cards Center hosted a symposium entitled “Federal Consumer Protection Regulation: Disclosures and Beyond.” The symposium brought together credit card industry leaders, legal scholars, consumer advocates, economists, and federal regulators to discuss standardized...

The identity theft forum sponsored by the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the Gartner Fellows Program brought together a broad range of stakeholders to discuss the important issue of identity theft. Participants from the financial services and merchant...

On October 14, 2004, the Payment Cards Center hosted a workshop led by Professor Mark Budnitz of Georgia State University School of Law. Budnitz, the author of four books and many Law Review articles on consumer payments, described how the current regime of consumer payment regulation and...

This conference, sponsored by the Payment Cards Center, brought together prepaid card industry leaders and regulators to discuss how various prepaid-card systems work and the ways in which different state and federal laws can affect them. The conference featured sessions on bank- and...

Prepaid cards, also commonly referred to as stored-value cards, are typically credit card-sized pieces of plastic that contain or represent an amount of pre-loaded value. They include a wide range of payment products, such as gift cards, payroll cards, teen cards, and travel cards. Despite...

On November 19, 2004, the Payment Cards Center and Wharton’s Financial Institutions Center co-sponsored a conference, "Forum on Validation of Consumer Credit Risk Models." The conference brought together leading academics, policymakers, and industry experts to discuss the general principles...

The National Bank Act (NBA), the 140- year-old statute that led to the creation of nationally chartered banks, has likely been one of the most influential forces in the formation and development of the U.S. credit card industry. The NBA gives nationally chartered banks a wide range of powers and...

Public data, proprietary issuer data, and data collected by the author from a review of over 150 lender-borrower contracts from 15 of the largest issuers in the U.S. suggest that, over the past 10 years, credit card issuers have drastically changed the way that they price their product. This...