The Fed Is Tweaking Its Next Payments Survey To Get More Info on Fraud and Mobile Payments

In payments-industry circles, the Federal Reserve System’s triennial Payments Study is one of the most eagerly awaited documents to come out of Washington. The sweeping study tracks the use of credit, debit, and prepaid cards, checks, and other non-cash payment methods. For its next survey, due out in about a year, the Fed hopes to keep up with the fast-changing payments world by asking a host of new questions about mobile wallets and fraud, among other things.

For example, the portion of the upcoming survey for financial-institution respondents will add 13 questions to the existing 20 in a section about general-purpose debit and prepaid cards. The answers could produce insights about the extent to which consumers are embracing mobile wallets, as well as other data reflecting the peculiarities of U.S. debit cards.

“Proposed revisions include adding questions on the number of debit and prepaid cards provisioned to mobile devices and digital wallets, and questions to allocate volumes into person-present/merchant point-of-sale volumes and remote volumes,” says a Fed notice in the government’s Federal Register about the planned changes. “Person-present volumes would be further allocated into signature, PIN, or other/no signature required.”

A separate section on credit cards would ask similar questions about the number of cards provisioned to mobile devices and digital wallets. In all, that section would have 29 questions, 13 more than the current survey.

The Fed also hopes to get a better handle on the extent of payments fraud. One section of questions for financial institutions will have 23 fraud-related questions, up 11 from the current survey. New questions about wire-transfer fraud also will be added.

A separate survey for networks, processors and issuers is expected to have new questions about fraud types and where fraudulent transactions originate.

“The new questions would request fraud transactions by type of fraud using established issuer-reported categories, such as lost card, stolen card, counterfeit card, and stolen card data,” the Fed filing says. “Fraud transactions would also be allocated by card entry mode and card verification methods in parallel to the allocations requested for transactions.”

Other new questions will attempt to get information about unauthorized fraud-related check returns, as well as fraud through person-to-person payments and bill-payments channels.

Apart from fraud, the Fed also is proposing new surveys for ATM networks and processors. Still another new survey will be going to transit operators to replace a survey that when to private-label prepaid card processors and issuers.

A major change in the upcoming survey will ask depository institutions to provide data for all of 2015. For the 2013 survey, the Fed asked banks and credit unions to supply data for one month, from which it made annualized estimates.

The Payments Study actually is based on four major surveys. In addition to the separate, triennial ones for depository institutions and networks/processors/issuers, a third triennial survey analyzes check samples. The fourth component, dubbed the Retail Payments Survey Supplement, is conducted annually.