Dinner - Harborview Dining Room

Opening Remarks – Perspectives on Emerging Payments

Jeffrey C. Fuhrer bio
Senior Vice President and Director of Research
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Sarah G. Green bio
Executive Vice President
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Keynote Address – Consumer Behavior and the Payments Landscape

Richard Oliver bio
Executive Vice President and Retail Payments Product Manager
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Consumer Payment Behavior Overview:
How and Why Do Consumers Choose Their Payment Methods?
This overview will summarize the existing literature on consumer payment behavior: what we know and don’t know, what we need to know, and the implications for public policy.

Stacey L Schreft bio
Vice President and Economist
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

“Who’s Afraid of the Cashless Society? Belgian Survey Evidence”
by Ellen Loix, Roland Pepermans, and Leo Van Hove

This session will summarize the results of a 2004 survey of Belgian consumer payment practices. The survey focused on payment methods at the point of sale: cash, debit cards, electronic purses, credit cards, and retailer cards. The paper relates adoption and usage of the various payment methods to respondents’ demographic and financial characteristics, their propensity to adopt new technologies, and supply-side factors.

Presenter:

Leo Van Hove bio
Associate Professor of Economics
The Free University of Brussels

Discussant:

Leon Majors bio
President
ESP Consulting Group

Elizabeth C. Klee bio
Economist
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Understanding Consumer Behavior at the Point of Sale
Consumers make millions of payments at retail establishments, also known as point of sale or POS transactions. Fifty years ago consumers had only two POS payment options—cash or check. Now they have many choices: credit card, check, cash, store-issued charge card, stored-value card, debit card, or EFT. How do they decide which payment method to use? Is cost a major factor? What about demographic characteristics? Does the dollar value of the transaction determine the selection? What has caused consumers to switch from checks to electronic payments? How are incentives (e.g., miles) influencing payment behavior? Are these incentives distorting payment behavior in a way that is costly for the retailer?

Jonathan Zinman will open this session with a brief overview of his paper “Debit or Credit?”

Moderator:

Tony Hayes bio
Managing Director, Financial Services
Dove Consulting

 

Panelists:

Tim Attinger bio
Senior Vice President, Product Innovation and Development
VISA USA

 

Lorraine Fischer bio
Senior Vice President, Payment Strategies
Wachovia Bank

Joseph Garbarino bio
Vice President, Financial Services
Wegmans Food Markets

Denis Bouchard bio
Director of Payment Services
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Jonathan Zinman bio
Assistant Professor
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
Paper: “Debit or Credit?”

General Discussion

Lunch - Boston Room

Remarks

Cathy E. Minehan bio
President and Chief Executive Officer
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

“Credit and Identity Theft”
by Charles M. Kahn and William Roberds

The quintessential crime of the information age is identity theft, the malicious use of personal identifying data. In this paper, the authors present a model of identities and their use in credit transactions. The incidence of identity theft represents a tradeoff between a desire to avoid costly and/or invasive monitoring of individuals on the one hand, and the need to control transaction fraud on the other. The results suggest that technological advances will not eliminate this tradeoff.

Presenter:

William Roberds bio
Research Economist and Policy Advisor
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

 

Discussants:

Nobuhiro Kiyotaki bio
Professor of Economics
London School of Economics

Seth Berman bio
Assistant U.S. Attorney
U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts

Understanding Consumer Bill Payment Behavior
Bills have traditionally been paid by writing checks and sending them with statements by U.S. mail. Increasingly, bills are being paid by automated clearinghouse debits. More recently, the Internet has created new bill payment methods such as online banking and online credit card payments. These new options offer consumers convenience, speed, and the ability to better control payment timing. How do consumers decide whether or not to adopt different forms of bill payment? Are the same consumers using different methods depending on the type of bill or the amount? Will check ever disappear as a bill payment method?

Tansel Yilmazer will begin this session with a summary of “The Determinants of Consumers’ Adoption of Internet Banking,” a paper authored by Yilmazer, Byoung-Min Kim, and Richard Widdows.

Moderator:

Steve Ledford bio
Chief Executive Officer
Global Concepts

 

Panelists:

Robert Pedersen bio
Vice President and Treasurer
United States Postal Service

Patty Thorell bio
Vice President, Payment Processing
Comcast Cable Communications

Robert Wilson bio
Industry Initiative & Payment Strategy Executive
Global Treasury Services Group
JPMorgan Chase

Tansel Yilmazer bio
Assistant Professor
Purdue University
Paper: “The Determinants of Consumers’ Adoption of Internet Banking”

General Discussion