The roughly 9.5 percent of all U.S. families that are without some type of transaction account (unbanked) are disproportionately represented by minorities. The unbanked often must rely on alternative ways to carry out basic financial transactions such as cashing payroll checks and paying bills....

A notable feature of immigration into the U.S. is the high degree of spatial concentration of different immigrant groups. We ask the question whether residing in areas with a large proportion of a co-ethnic group influence the decision to own a home for Hispanics in the Chicago Metropolitan...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago will host its eighth payments conference on June 5–6, 2008. The conference will highlight threats to the security of the payments system and explore solutions to those challenges. This article previews issues that will be covered at the conference.

Technological innovations have enabled numerous payment methods to proliferate in the market. As a result, payment providers have to address concerns about pricing, infrastructure, and regulatory standards. To discuss these and related issues, the Chicago Fed hosted its seventh payments...

As consumers and merchants increasingly adopt electronic payments, the pricing of these services has generated substantial scrutiny by public authorities around the world. To discuss these developments and related issues, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago hosted its ninth annual Payments...

The authors highlight key issues from the presentations, keynote addresses, and open floor discussions at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's eighth annual Payments Conference. The conference's agenda appears at the end of this article.

This article compares the much anticipated but ultimately stalled smart card revolution of the 1990s with the current expansion of mobile payment platforms, and asks how mobile payments fit into the larger payment system.

At the Chicago Fed’s 2011 Payments Conference, held on May 19–20, participants discussed how changes in consumers’ behavior in the wake of the financial crisis and recession can translate into opportunities and challenges for both traditional and nascent payment providers. They also...

Immediate funds transfer (IFT) is a convenient, certain, secure, and low-cost means of electronically transferring money between bank accounts with no or minimal delay in receivers’ receipt and use of funds. Yet IFT is not widely available in the U.S. This article summarizes discussions on the...

Given the growing popularity of e-commerce and m-commerce over the past few years, remote payments have become commonplace. Unfortunately, remote payments fraud has grown in response. On September 26, 2011, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Secure Remote Payment Council (SRPc)...