Looking back, 2008 saw an array of Federal Reserve Bank–sponsored conferences and events focused on retail payments risk and fraud issues, as well as a number of highly relevant papers. It's worth compiling and highlighting a few of those Federal Reserve efforts (at the risk of leaving some out!). I think all these developments reflect a renewed interest in public-private partnerships both in the Fed and in the industry, interest that will promote collaborative efforts to address common issues.
First, here are links to three conference summaries and related papers resulting from Reserve Bank–hosted events in 2008:
- April 2008 – Philadelphia Fed Payment Cards Center: "Maintaining a Safe Environment for Payment Cards: Examining Evolving Threats Posed by Fraud"
- June 2008 – Chicago Fed Payments Studies: "Payments Fraud: Perception Versus Reality"
- October 2008 – Atlanta Fed Retail Payments Risk Forum: "Retail Payments Risk and Fraud: Detection and Mitigation"
In addition to the results of these conferences, there were a number of papers published last year from Fed staff that I would also highlight to our readers on relevant issues:
- Braun, et al., "Understanding Risk Management in Emerging Retail Payments"
- Gerdes, "Recent Payment Trends in the United States"
- Jacob and Summers, "Assessing the landscape of payments fraud"
- Weiner, "The Federal Reserve's Role in Retail Payments: Adapting to a New Environment"
By Clifford S. Stanford, assistant vice president and director of the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed