A primary mission of the Retail Payments Risk Forum (RPRF) is to educate the payments industry on the financial, operational, compliance, and reputational risks of payment methods and channels. We seek to accomplish this outreach mission not only through this weekly blog but also through webinars, papers, and presentations at payments conferences and industry group meetings. But as Fox Mulder of the X Files always said, "We are not alone out there." The Atlanta Fed and other Federal Reserve Banks as well as the system-wide Federal Reserve Education (FRE) group make many efforts to improve financial literacy.
The Education Outreach group within the Atlanta Fed's Public Affairs Department offers a vast number of educational outreach programs including:
- Professional development training and credentialing for K-12 grade teachers in the Sixth District on financial literacy
- Development and updates for a personal finance curriculum with supplemental infographic posters and lesson/activity books
- Delivery of career-day programs for high school students as well as teaching job interview skills and holding mock job interviews
- Advice to state education departments of the states in the Sixth District on their personal finance standards
- Partnering with the St. Louis Fed to conduct a Native American financial literacy initiative
The efforts don't go unnoticed. The Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and St. Louis received the Institute for Financial Literacy's 2021 EIFLE Award–Children's Education Program of the Year for their development of a personal finance curriculum and corresponding training program for more than 200 high school teachers in Mississippi as part of a collaboration with the Mississippi Council on Economic Education.
The Atlanta and St. Louis Feds are not the only Federal Reserve Banks in their education outreach efforts. The Richmond Fed recently developed and released an interactive training course 
called Payments 101 that covers the history of payments and the role of the Federal Reserve. Of course, financial literacy is more than just payments. The Federal Reserve offers many programs on personal finance training on the responsible use of credit, budgeting, and economic decision-making as well.
At the start, I mentioned the RPRF's various outreach efforts. But our education efforts go both ways. My colleagues and I are constantly reading industry publications and blogs from other payments geeks, attending conference sessions, meeting with vendors, and having one-on-one conversations with payments stakeholders to learn about the latest trends and tools. And, of course, we depend on your interaction to learn what's going on in the industry and always welcome your comments.
By David Lott, a payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed