The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta recently announced the establishment of a special committee to look at payment inclusion.
The committee will be a public/private collaboration that will work to promote inclusive banking practices throughout the country. Payment options like digital wallets, apps, and mobile payments are convenient and have gained usership in recent years. However, these payment systems are often unavailable to people in the United States who are currently unbanked or underbanked.
The committee, made up of payment and financial inclusion experts, will research emerging challenges in payment inclusion, including collecting and analyzing data to understand trends in the payment system. They will then make recommendations to the industry based on their findings. The committee will be active for two years.
Inclusion Matters
Rafael Bostic, President of the Atlanta Fed and chair of the new committee, stated, “It is important to make sure that there is not just one path to financial inclusion. By focusing on payments inclusion, we hope to ensure that cash-based users and vulnerable populations are not further marginalized from innovative financial services.”
Bostic continued, “By bringing people together from a diverse set of backgrounds and focusing them specifically on the issue of inclusion, we expect conversations unlike others that have touched on this subject.”
Committee Members
Other than Bostic, committee members include:
- Mary Kepler, Atlanta Fed Senior VP and Chief Risk Officer
- David Benck, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Hibbett Sports
- Sudheer Chava, Alton M. Costley Chair and Professor of Finance, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Denise Dias, digital finance policy, regulation and supervision expert, CGAP-The World Bank-Toronto Centre
- Andrea Donkor, Vice President, regulatory relations, PayPal
- Timothy Flacke, Co-founder and Executive Director, Commonwealth
- John Garratt, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Dollar General
- Mark Pearce, Director of the Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- Bruce Renard, Executive Director, The National ATM Council Inc.
- Courtney Robinson, Head of Financial Inclusion and Public Policy Development, Square Inc.
- Bob Skiba, Executive Vice President, InComm Payments
- John M. Turner Jr., Chief Executive Officer and President, Regions Bank
- Silvanus J. Udoka,Ph.D., Dean of the School of Business Administration, Clark Atlanta University
- Robert Ward, Senior Vice President, Global Payments
- Brian K. Williams, President, First Farmers and Merchants Bank in Columbia, Tennessee
