Banks rely heavily on incoming payments from other banks to fund their own payments. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, destroyed facilities in Lower Manhattan, leaving some banks unable to send payments through the Federal Reserve's Fedwire payments system. As a result, many banks...

The swift growth of e-commerce and the Internet has led to the development of a new form of electronic funds transfer—the personal on-line payment—that uses web and e-mail technologies to initiate and confirm payments. This article describes this payment instrument and the trends that have...

Credit extensions to banks using the Fedwire Funds Service-the Federal Reserve's real-time gross settlement (RTGS) payments system-can reach intraday peaks as high as $86 billion. This article evaluates the effectiveness of alternative methods of settling Fedwire payments in reducing intraday...

The U.S. dollar clearing and settlement system received little attention during the recent financial crisis, mainly because it performed reliably, processing record volumes and values of trades made in stressed financial markets. This article shows how Federal Reserve policy measures aimed at...

The Federal Reserve's Fedwire funds transfer service-the biggest large-value payments system in the United States-has long displayed a peak of activity in the late afternoon. Theory suggests that the concentration of late-afternoon Fedwire activity reflects coordination among participating banks...

New technologies used in payment methods can reduce risk, but they can also lead to new risks. Emerging retail payments are prone to operational and fraud risks, especially security breaches and potential use in illicit transactions. This article describes an economic framework for understanding...