I'm at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank's conference on Consumer Payment Innovation. Bruce Summers, Former Director, Federal Reserve Information Technology, just finished presenting a major paper on payments system infrastructure and the Fed's potential role...
Got back this morning after a whirlwind two days in Austin for NACHA Payments 2011. I was in briefings or meetings nearly the whole time, so I barely attended break outs and skipped all of the general sessions, but here are my reflections based on my observations,...
After months of speculation and hand-wringing, last Friday we finally got a relatively complete reading on how the Federal Reserve will likely implement the prescribed regulation of debit interchange and debit network competition. My partner, Carol Benson, has also...
At Glenbrook, we think (and teach!) about the payments industry by domains (the purpose of the payment) and players (users and providers). Our quick take on the impact of yesterday’s proposed rules on each is below. One general assumption I’ve made here is that the...
Last June, in an article titled "The End of Interchange", I wrote about the then yet to be passed Durbin amendment - and how it might affect debit interchange fees. Earlier today, we got the first glimpse. The point of my earlier article was focused on the...
One of the more interesting elements added late in the game to the Durbin amendment was the language added around card-related fraud costs. This has led to much speculation about what this might mean for various anti-fraud technologies (e.g., EMV in the US, a...
While I don’t manage to attend every year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s annual payment conference remains one of my favorites. The Chicago Fed has a great payments team that works hard at putting together a timely program, but I like this event because it...
Glenbrook’s Erin McCune is in Orlando for BAI’s Payments Connect conference. At its Payments Connect conference BAI assembled a dream ACH panel, consisting of: Jan Estep, CEO NACHA Rich Oliver, EVP Retail Product Manager, Federal Reserve Rossana Salaris, SVP,...
The Fed announced this morning that 99% of checks are now clearing electronically between banks. During a period of unremitting bank-bashing, let's take a moment to applaud a real home run by the bankers. The radical transformation of the check infrastructure,...
The Fed’s announcement on Thursday of a new rule prohibiting overdraft fees on debit card and ATM transactions without consumer opt-in is an economic earthquake for retail banks. The Center for Responsible Lending has estimated that banks make $23.7 billion in...
