Banking PayPers

Banking PayPers are briefings and reports on issues in today's rapidly evolving payment system that are of importance to bankers and other payments specialists.

Contributors to Banking PayPers may be individuals throughout the Boston Reserve Bank, including FIRO and the Consumer Payments Research Center (CPRC). Occasionally, papers of relevance to banking and payments written by others in the Federal Reserve System will be included.

To find out when a new Banking PayPer is available, please subscribe to FedBoston News for Bankers.

2011

• Mobile Payments in the United States: Mapping Out the Road Ahead
  by Darin Contini and Marianne Crowe, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; Cynthia Merritt and Richard Oliver, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; and Steve Mott, BetterBuyDesign
  
  The paper depicts the current mobile payments ecosystem in the U.S.; discusses barriers, gaps, and opportunities; and sets forth a set of foundational elements that workgroup participants believe are fundamental to the development of a robust mobile payments environment. This "vision" for the future is built upon the recognition that the current environment faces many challenges and that success will require extensive collaboration between participants to ensure that consumers see a homogenous solution as they do today in other payment channels such as checks, ACH, and cards. Moreover, it must be a solution based on agreed upon standards, rules, and practices that ensure seamless interoperability regardless of the handset, mobile carrier, financial institution, payment network, or merchant location involved in any individual's desired transaction.

2010

• Mobile Payments Industry Roundtable Summary
  This document summarizes a meeting convened by retail payments representatives from the Boston and Atlanta Federal Reserve Banks for key industry stakeholders involved in mobile payments in the U.S. The Fed has always been involved in payments as part of its central bank role, so we are interested in payments migration from traditional to electronic and to newer emerging payments. While the Fed has begun to do research on mobile banking and payments, we wanted to better understand where the industry is headed, barriers to adoption, and how it may impact consumers in general.

2009

• Person-to-Person Electronic Funds Transfers: Recent Developments and Policy Issues
  by Oz Shy, Consumer Payments Research Center (CPRC)
  
  The paper investigates the reasons why person-to-person electronic funds transfers are still not very common in the United States compared with practices in many other countries. The paper also describes recent enhancements to online and mobile banking that provide account holders with low-cost interfaces to manage person-to-person electronic funds transfers via automated clearing house (ACH). On the theoretical side, the paper characterizes the critical mass levels needed for payment instruments to become widely adopted. Given the Fed's long-term heavy involvement in check clearing, the paper concludes with policy discussions of whether intervention is needed. Published as Public Policy Discussion Paper No. 10-1

• Mobile Banking in New England: The Current State of the Market
  by Marianne Crowe, FRB Boston Consumer Payments Research Center (CPRC) and Breffni McGuire, NEACH
  
  This report summarizes the current state of the mobile banking landscape in the United States and presents the results of a survey of mobile banking at New England depository financial institutions, conducted in July 2008. (August 2009)

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