The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is currently identifying financial technology companies (fintechs) involved in payments. Our goal is to build relationships with these companies so we can understand their issues and challenges.
The Federal Reserve's mission for payments is to ensure an effective and efficient system. In pursuing this mission, the Atlanta Fed focuses on the accessibility, integrity, and confidentiality of payments. We play a significant role in this mission by virtue of being an operator of ACH and check clearing as well as a payments researcher.
We are also at the center of an important regional hub of fintech activity. In Georgia, there are 120 fintech companies employing more than 38,000 workers. According to the Technology Association of Georgia
, the top 20 Georgia-based fintech companies generate $72 billion in revenues annually, and 70 percent of all domestic card transactions flow through Georgia-based fintechs, earning this region the nickname of "Transaction Alley."
In addition, venture capital investment in fintech contributes to Atlanta being ranked as the 13th most important fintech hub in the world and fourth in the United States (behind San Francisco, New York, and Chicago), according to the University of Cambridge's 2018 Global Fintech Hub Index 
.
Given our expertise, our role in payments toward furthering the Federal Reserve’s mission, and our location, the Atlanta Fed, in partnership with fintech companies in Transaction Alley, has a unique opportunity to have a real impact on advancing safety in this innovative payments space.
Fintechs in payments aim to produce useful and profitable payments-related products and services but may lack awareness of consumer compliance and rights or the importance of development practices that culminate in safe and secure products and services. Our work will focus on safer payments innovation for payments used by consumers.
The Atlanta Fed is also interested in experimenting with innovative technology used by fintech companies where we believe the technology could solve our business problems or be beneficial to us. This experimentation will give us first-hand experience and deep knowledge of fintech-developed technology and therefore an understanding of the contribution and impact the technology has on the payments ecosystem.
Through this work, we hope also to advance economic mobility and resilience, another priority for the Atlanta Fed. Our desire is to engage fintechs with products or solutions that provide low-cost, accessible options to advance financial inclusion and improve consumers' financial health.
Together with the payments fintech industry, we can bring clarity regarding the impact of fintech solutions on the payments system. So we encourage the fintech payment innovators to partner with the Atlanta Fed to understand payments risk and create safer payments solutions.
Get in touch with me at Mary.Kepler@atl.frb.org to start the conversation.
By Mary Kepler, senior vice president and chief risk officer in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed