Each year, the Risk Forum produces a year-in-review webinar. Every Risk Forum member helps plan the webinar, bringing together everyone's unique expertise and perspectives. During the year, each of us engages with a different area of the payments industry and initiatives, which leads to good-natured debate when it comes time at year's end to rank important payment topics. (If you are an avid follower of our blog, you might be able to guess who is pulling for which topics.) This year was a little different, though. We could not think about payments without also considering the heaviness and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our 2020 webinar will dig into key payment issues that are responses to the pandemic, or opportunities or challenges resulting from the pandemic. The goal is to share our analysis of the data collected over the past year, parse out trends that may have started during the pandemic but might be here to stay, and engage with our audience on where focus should be as we prepare to turn the page on this year and start a welcomed new year.
We will first answer this question: How have businesses' and consumers' payments behaviors adapted over the course of the year? There have been plenty of headlines covering retail trends both in-person and online or e-commerce. The Risk Forum will share details and data about retail payment trends while unpacking the nuances of the underlying technologies that facilitate retail payments. Also in this category are person-to-person and business-to-business payment trends, which we'll highlight, too.
New to the year-end webinar agenda is a focus on cash and coin. We'll share data on consumer cash usage and holdings along with unintended consequences, such as how currency demands have affected ATM operations. Another aspect of currency is how demand for cash this year has caused a coin supply distribution issue, sometimes incorrectly referred to as a coin shortage. The Forum will address the myths about the coin supply distribution issue and share insights from the work by the U.S. Coin Task Force.
These conversations about retail trends and currency demand are followed by another critical discussion, this one about financial inclusion opportunities that have been accelerated by the pandemic. The Atlanta Fed is working to emphasize how digital payment innovations can affect cash-based and vulnerable populations. We will highlight how recent events such as the distribution issues related to stimulus money and general financial support among family and friends have brought additional attention to financial inclusion. We will also share our research on this topic and talk about what steps we are taking toward creating solutions.
Not new to the agenda, unfortunately, will be coverage of fraud challenges. This year, we'll talk about scams that are capitalizing on pandemic responses. There have been several big fraud trends, relating to Paycheck Protection Program loans and Economic Impact Disaster Loans, unemployment benefits, fundraisers for fake charities, and PPE supplies (counterfeit). Rest assured: we will also highlight advancements in fraud defense tools, especially in ecommerce.
Please join us for the 2020 Year-in-Review webinar, our last Talk About Payments webinar for the year. This session will take place on December 17 from 1 to 2 p.m. (ET). To participate in the webinar, you must register
in advance (there is no charge).
By Jessica Washington, AAP, a payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed