On Payments Risk and Fraud - A Look Back

2008: A year of thought on retail payments risk and fraud

Looking back, 2008 saw an array of Federal Reserve Bank–sponsoredconferences and events focused on retail payments risk and fraudissues, as well as a number of highly relevant papers. It's worthcompiling and highlighting a few of those Federal Reserve efforts (atthe risk of leaving some out!). I think all these developments reflecta renewed interest in public-private partnerships both in the Fed andin the industry, interest that will promote collaborative efforts toaddress 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 numberof papers published last year from Fed staff that I would alsohighlight 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