Over the years, leaders at the Federal Reserve have helped ensure that the System successfully supports payment and settlement system safety, efficiency and innovation via thought leadership and services offered to the banking industry and U.S. government. Meet four of the Federal Reserve Bank presidents who are instrumental in achieving Fed payments innovation and successes.
Tom Barkin, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
As president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Tom Barkin is responsible for the Richmond Fed’s role in monetary policy, bank supervision, cash processing and the Federal Reserve’s technology organization. He is “on the ground,” continually engaging with payments stakeholders in the Fed’s Fifth District.
In addition to leading the Richmond Fed, Barkin is chair of the Payments Committee, co-chair of the Real-Time Payments Oversight Committee and a member of the Payments System Policy Advisory Committee (Off-site), which advises the Board of Governors on matters related to domestic and international payment issues. “The payments landscape continues to move toward fast, reliable payments,” Barkin said, “and at the Fed, we’re innovating to evolve with it. We are expanding the FedNow® Service, modernizing the cash supply chain, and preparing to migrate the Fedwire® Funds Service to the more efficient ISO® 20022 message format. We’ll continue to seek feedback from the industry to identify and decide what’s next.”
Susan M. Collins, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Dr. Susan Collins supports economic opportunity in New England through regular engagements with a wide range of stakeholders in the region’s economy and financial sector. True to her background as a former educator, Collins seeks to educate the public about the fundamentals of the Federal Reserve’s mission. Her public remarks and media interviews offer a window into the Fed’s role in providing back-end infrastructure that underpins the financial system.
Collins has said many people don’t realize that “there is exciting work underway to ensure our country’s payments infrastructure meets the public’s needs. Reserve Banks underpin many of the ways Americans make and receive payments through coins and currency, checks and electronic payments, such as ACH direct deposits and wire transfers.”
Lorie K. Logan, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Lorie Logan has led the Dallas Fed since 2022 and serves on the Federal Reserve’s Payments Committee. “Throughout my career, increased speed has been a key theme in financial services innovation,” Logan said. “Broadly available instant payments are the latest step in this push for speed, both in the United States and around the world. Of course, wire transfers between financial institutions are instantaneous and have been possible for decades. But enabling consumers and businesses to instantaneously make direct payments to one another is much newer and potentially transformative… broad access to our FedNow Service is likely to foster all kinds of innovations that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
Mary C. Daly, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Under the leadership of Dr. Mary Daly, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has played an integral role in the Federal Reserve System’s payments infrastructure and research initiatives. Key publications include the annual Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, which provides valuable insights about U.S. consumer payment trends.
In addition, the San Francisco Fed has been active in studying the future of payments through its annual Fintech Conference (Off-site), EmergingTech Economic Research Network or EERN (Off-site) and other initiatives that bring together leading experts from academia, private industry and government to explore forces shaping the payment landscape, from cryptocurrencies to artificial intelligence. “EERN recognizes that technology is always changing quickly,” Daly said. “We created it to bring individuals in the Federal Reserve System together to understand how technology affects payments, the financial system and the economy. We’re in learning mode.”
This is the second in a series of Fed360 articles featuring Federal Reserve leaders of note in payments.
