In theory, banks that conduct all their business over the Internet will have low overhead expenses. If these saving materialize, Internet banks could use them to fuel fast growth while still earning normal profits. This article analyzes a small sample of "pure lay" Internet banks launched during...

In the first of two articles in this issue, the authors document the increasing importance of noninterest income at U.S. commercial banking companies and address two fundamental misunderstandings regarding this trend: the belief that fee-based activities provide more stable earnings than...

Payment systems policy is a critical interest of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In the process of monitoring payment developments, the Emerging Payments & Policy Resource Center maintains a bibliography of payment systems research that includes a broad range of topics, studies, and media....

In this article, we construct a two-period model to investigate what market conditions would support a credit card equilibrium given two commonly observed credit card pricing conventions consumers rarely are charged higher prices for using their credit cards and if they payoff their credit card...

We find that wealthier and more educated immigrants are more likely to make use of basic banking services and other formal financial services. Holding these (and other) factors constant, we find immigrants from countries with more effective institutions are more likely to have a relationship...

In this article, we construct a model to study competing payment networks, where networks offer differentiated products in terms of benefits to consumers and merchants. We study market equilibria for a variety of market structures: duopolistic competition and cartel, symmetric and asymmetric...

More than 35% of Thai households either give or receive remittances, and remittances account for about one-third of the income of the receiving households. Remittance relationships may be an important source of protection against adverse events for the individuals involved. This paper provides...