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The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive historical review of the role of the Federal Reserve in retail payments in the USA.

It reviews the literature on the role of the Federal Reserve and assessments of its involvement.

In addition to its oversight and operational role, the Federal Reserve has conducted R&D and facilitated technology adoption. It has provided effective competition to the private sector without subsidies.

The Federal Reserve has served the public interest and private networks have benefited from the “visible hand” of government.

Migration to electronic payments will likely change its role from an operator to setting standards for safety and security.

The historical review provides context against which the future strategy of the Federal Reserve may be assessed.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize and provide commentary on the US Department of Treasury's Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure, issued on March 31, 2008.

The paper summarizes and comments on the short‐, intermediate‐, and long‐term recommendations laid out in the Blueprint. The short‐term recommendations are to modernize the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, principally by broadening its focus to include the entire financial sector; to address gaps in mortgage origination oversight, principally though creating a federal Mortgage Origination Commission; and to enhance the Federal Reserve Board's current temporary liquidity provisioning process. The Treasury's intermediate‐term recommendations are intended to modernize the regulatory structure and to eliminate duplication. They are to phase out and transition the thrift charter to the national banking charter; to merge the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC); to establish a uniform, comprehensive regulatory system for, and create a federal charter for, “systemically important” payment and settlement systems; and to create an optional federal charter for insurers. The Blueprint's long‐term optimal regulatory structure envisions an “objectives‐based” regulatory approach in which three primary regulators would be established to focus individually on market stability regulation, prudential financial regulation and business conduct; three types of charters for financial institutions: federal insured depository institutions, federal insurance institutions, and federal financial services providers; the Federal Reserve Board assuming the role of market stability regulator; a prudential federal regulatory agency to regulate financial institutions with some type of explicit government guarantee associated with their business operations; and a conduct‐of‐business regulatory agency to regulate the business conduct of all financial institutions. In addition to the three objectives‐based regulators, the Blueprint recommends establishing two other regulatory entities: a federal insurance guarantee corporation and a corporate finance regulator.

The Blueprint finds that substantial regulatory reform is necessary to respond to significant developments including globalization of the capital markets, innovative and sophisticated new financial products and trading strategies, growing institutionalization of the capital markets, and convergence of financial service providers and financial products. Among the areas where one may see action and debate in the near future are: broadening the scope and membership of the President's Working Group on Capital Markets, adoption of uniform minimum licensing standards and the creation of a mortgage origination commission, further discussion of the terms and conditions attached to non‐depository institutions' access to the Federal Reserve discount window, continuing debate around the possible merger of the SEC and the CFTC, and updating by the SEC of the self‐regulatory organization (SRO) rule‐making process.

The paper is a clear and concise summary with commentary from expert securities lawyers.

Despite continuing debate about costs and benefits, managed care became an integral part of the health care sector during the 1990s. In this paper, we examine the organizational and practice variation in the managed care industry at two points in the 1990s using a national census of organizations operating in those years. We use a definition of managed care that captures the increased diversity within the industry while still distinguishing it from traditional indemnity, fee-for-service care. We draw on institutional theory to begin to formulate a framework for understanding why certain organizational forms and practices emerged when and where they did.

Cryptocurrency arose, and grew in popularity, following the financial crisis of 2008 built upon a promise of decentralizing money and payments. An examination of the history of money and banking in the United States demonstrates that stable money benefits from strict controls and commitments by a centralized government through chartering restrictions and a broad safety net, rather than decentralization. In addition, financial crises happen when the government allows money creation to occur outside of official channels. The US central bank is then forced into a policy of supporting a range of money-like assets in order to maintain a grip on monetary policy and some semblance of financial stability.

In addition, this chapter argues that cryptocurrency as a form of shadow money shares many of the problematic attributes of both the privately issued bank notes that created instability during the “free banking” era and the “shadow banking” activities that contributed to the 2008 crisis. In this sense, rather than being a novel and disruptive idea, cryptocurrency replicates many of the systemically destabilizing aspects of privately issued money and money-like instruments.

This chapter proposes that, rather than allowing a new, digital “free banking” era to emerge, there are better alternatives. Specifically, it argues that the Federal Reserve (Fed) should use its tools to improve public payment systems, enact robust utility-like regulations for private digital currencies and limit the likelihood of bubbles using prudential measures.

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate some reflections on the potentially contradictory relationship between the adoption of innovative payment instruments and the prevention and fight against financial crime. The ideal addresses of the paper are regulators in these two fields (Central Banks; Financial Intelligence Units).

The paper is largely based on reflections coming from the author's background as a central banker with a long experience in the statistical analysis of financial data with an anti‐money laundering (AML) focus.

The paper takes the move from the present and prospective characteristics of the payment means and moves on to analyse briefly the possible implications of their evolution in the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The analysis shows how some factors that make innovative payment instruments desirable may, at the same time, represent elements of weakness in the prevention of financial crime.

The paper addresses a number of theoretical and systemic issues but no specific data or calculations are provided to evaluate alternative regulatory scenarios. Further studies could offer a more quantitative approach, in an attempt, for instance, to estimate the costs and benefits of the evolution of the praxis and legislation in the field of payment system and AML.

The paper openly tackles the cross effects of regulation in the financial sector, specifically addressing the potential risk factor represented by loosely regulated innovations of the payment instruments. The argument is intended to highlight both the importance of technological evolution and the necessity of a proper supervision over potential loopholes and unguarded passages that could be exploited by financial criminals.

The paper addresses questions of particular relevance in the present, fast developing world of advanced technological payments and global financial crime. The author underlines explicitly how these two fields share some common features; an original argument is developed with reference to the possible risk of unwanted spillovers between these two areas of public interest.

Facilitation payments (petty corruption) are small payments to an officer or employee, public or private, who is responsible for a nondiscretionary service, in order to facilitate, accelerate, or cheapen a procedure, for example, issuing a passport or connecting a house to a power distribution network. They are widespread in some countries, and are often considered irrelevant, but they have very large negative impacts in generating a culture of corruption, affecting the functioning of public offices or private companies and on costs for citizens. This chapter explains what facilitation payments are, why they are an ethical problem for people who pay and receive them, for companies and for society, and the positioning of the fight against those payments within the overall strategy against corruption.

This article analyses the existing retail and distribution legal framework in which Internet companies operate, focusing on data breaches and other issues of relevance to these companies. In order to identify who should be responsible for the largest share of improving people's quality of life, this study takes into account the perspectives of both consumers and businesses (or service provider). The author states that where there is a high probability of a security or privacy breach and the customer suffers moderate to severe damage, the burden of proof may shift to the corporation. However, the customer's obligation is conditioned by factors such as the customer's risk tolerance, the customer's losses and the efficiency of the security investment.

The author suggests that the decentralized nature of blockchain, information sharing, immutability and smart contracting capabilities have the potential to disrupt established business models and social norms. Challenges related to trust, customs oversight and payments are discussed, as well as the process of creating the framework for electronic commerce. As part of this research, the author has taken into consideration the increasing popularity of Internet shopping.

The author demonstrates that due to the worldwide reach of the internet and the fast advancement of computer technology, the economies of the globe have grown increasingly linked. Even though e-commerce has been growing rapidly in recent years due to innovations in both technology and international retail and distribution forms, it still confronts a number of challenges.

In e-commerce that makes use of blockchain technology, there are significant costs associated with transferring data formats, a lack of consensus and limited emissivity in the flow of law and information. Reduced costs and associated negative externalities would be tremendously beneficial for both private enterprise and forward-thinking public policy.

This paper examines the potential liability concerns that may arise in the context of electronic transactions should a breach of security or privacy occur, as the author shows from a practical standpoint. Computers, mobile devices, tablets, sensors, smart meters and even autos are just some of the many channels via which data may be sent. It is conceivable for data flows in e-commerce, cloud and the Internet of Things to follow a regular pattern. This may endanger the confidentiality or security of the data. These have evolved into a significant barrier that web stores must overcome.

The author argues that resolving disputes related to the processing of electronic transactions is crucial to the growth of e-commerce businesses since customer happiness is directly correlated with business success.

The purpose of the paper is to explain how UK bank failure resolution policy has evolved since the nationalisation of Northern Rock in February 2008 in the light of the fallout from the sub‐prime crisis and the subsequent credit crunch.

The evolution of the UK authorities' approach, from a piecemeal approach to a comprehensive, system‐wide approach, is traced through analysis of the treatment accorded the troubled entities Alliance and Leicester, HBOS (both the subject of separate officially brokered takeover‐rescues) and Bradford and Bingley (eventually nationalised, like Northern Rock) prior to consideration of the two industry‐wide bailout schemes introduced in October 2008 and January 2009.

Confounding initial hopes, Northern Rock proves to be just the first of a series of major institutional casualties of the fallout from the sub‐prime crisis, eventually necessitating a comprehensive and system‐wide solution. While this successfully prevents the system from literally collapsing in the Autumn of 2008, in the wake of the decision not to rescue Lehman Brothers in the USA, it fails to stimulate lending, as intended. Accordingly, a second industry bailout package was introduced in January 2009, but even this may fail to secure the main goals of intervention‐financial stability and a resuscitation of bank lending to support the ailing economy‐heralding possible further state inroads into domestic bank ownership.

The paper clearly identifies the need for, and nature of, both the ad hoc and system‐wide solutions adopts to deal with individual cases of institutional “failure” and the wider stability concerns, respectively. The authorities' actions are subject to critical analysis, while a personal assessment of both the House of Commons Treasury Committee's report on Northern Rock and the tripartite authorities' reform proposals, which culminate in the Banking Act of 2009, is also provided.

Hisbah is one of the distinguished institutions that had emerged since the early days of the Islamic empire. Based on its cardinal duty to enjoin good and prohibit evil, over time, its functions gradually expanded, and its responsibilities increasingly grew. In light of the contemporary trend in establishing institutional framework for consumer protection, entrusting an agency with multifarious tasks may not be the best and effective way in handling consumer protection issues. Thus, this chapter attempts to explore the new paradigm of hisbah as a consumer protection institution in Malaysia with a special reference to the Islamic consumer credit industry. While utilising the doctrinal legal research methodology, relevant sources of law have been examined and analysed. This research finds that the classical hisbah institution provides a good reference point in establishing regulatory agency and dispute management body. Nevertheless, some modifications are required to remain relevant especially in terms of specialisation of role and function. Likewise, it is viewed that adjustment of the hisbah institution is also necessary regarding the characteristic of the muhtasib (ombudsman).

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.