This week, I began an important new assignment. I am now the CEO of the International Payments Framework Association (IPFA). If you haven’t yet heard of it, the IPFA provides rules, standards, operating procedures, and guidelines to improve cross-border payments....
Over the past few weeks I’ve had a chance to talk about the prospects for faster payments in the U.S. with representatives from both The Clearing House and the Fed. Both groups, as I’m sure you know, are actively working the space: the Fed with its...
The Federal Reserve’s recent announcement that it would not build a new payment rail for processing faster payments created some disappointment for many who are unsatisfied with our country’s current payments system capabilities. In a welcome move, The...
Imagine a country where less than 10% of the adult population has a bank account and only about half of those account holders have a debit card. Credit cards are virtually non-existent. There are only a couple dozen banks in the whole country. Cash truly is king....
I’m just back from Boston and the marathon known as Sibos 2014. In a post earlier this week, I shared a couple of observations from the show floor and the conference sessions. Now that the conference has closed, I’m thinking about the themes that spoke to me. And,...
Time is a vacuum at Sibos. It’s a great time to catch up with old friends and meet new colleagues. The exhibition floor is overwhelming, even now after banks have scaled back their presence at events like these. There is a plethora of panels on a broad range of...
As the summer holiday period close, I find myself in a back to school mode even though I haven’t been enrolled for nearly twenty years. Europe is especially on my mind as we prepare for the Glenbrook Payments in Europe workshop next month. What are the big payments...
Faster Payments May Get Here Faster than We Thought Some of you may know that I’ve been an ardent advocate for a faster-payments infrastructure in the United States. I’ve been closely following the Fed’s process towards payments system improvements. On Thursday in...
We often get interesting questions about payments, and the latest one stumped us: "How many credit and debit fraudulent uses are first detected by the bank? By the customer?" We don't know the answer to that one or of any good source for this data so we...
Walmart’s announcement that it would offer store-to-store money transfers has a number of interesting aspects worth pondering. At a high level, this seems like a no brainer. People need to send money to other people and lots of folks find themselves in Walmart’s...
