Making America’s payment system work for a digital century

America once led in the adoption of new payment technologies, introducing advances from credit cards to automated teller machines (ATMs) to the world. Today, it is lagging noticeably behind. Instead of the cheap and accessible instant payments available around the globe, our payments infrastructure typically moves money slowly, imposing costs on users and falling far short of its potential to power the economy. Despite its importance for growth and productivity, payments reform has long languished in the backseat of the American policy debate. But today, as digitization and technological innovation appear poised to transform how money is imagined, payments are rapidly taking center stage. The arrival of this digital century presents a generational opportunity to reform payments in ways that can better promote financial access for everyday people, ensure maximal efficiency of the dollar, and enable seamless commerce and international trade. At the same time, innovation in payments systems and technologies are raising a plethora of new regulatory challenges and creating unsettling questions surrounding the role of government, central banks, and regulators within the monetary architecture.

On Friday, October 6, Brookings, Cornell Law, and Vanderbilt Law hosted an event to examine America’s payment system, featuring keynotes from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra and Federal Reserve Governor Christopher J. Waller. Two panels explored in detail the current state of U.S. payments and the new emerging digital asset technologies that could disrupt them. The event discussed a variety of topics, such as the workings of public and private real-time payment systems (FedNow and Real-Time Payments) alongside cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, central bank digital currencies – and more. This event is a part of the Series on Financial Markets and Regulation from the Center on Regulation and Markets.

Viewers submitted questions by emailing [email protected] or via Twitter @BrookingsEcon using #FutureofPayments.

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