An Electronic Supply Chain: Will Payments Follow?

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's fourth Payments Conference entitled, "An Electronic Supply Chain: Will Payments Follow?," took place May 26–27, 2004 at the Chicago Fed. Conference speakers were payment industry leaders who provided an insider's perspective on the necessary success factors for electronic supply chain and epayments integration.

The conference addressed questions such as:

• B2B payments: Who wins and who loses?
• What is the value proposition for corporate trading partners?
• Are incentives aligned for existing payment networks to provide B2B solutions?
• Are financial institutions proactive or reactive to B2B solutions?
• Why are certain industries adopting B2B payments while others wait?

The discussion opened on Wednesday, May 26, with a conference opening keynote address by Cathryn R. Gregg, Partner at Treasury Strategies, Inc. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis First Vice President and Chief Operations Officer, James Lyon , began proceedings on Thursday, May 27, with a keynote address on the Federal Reserve's perspective on business-to-business payments.

The conference featured four moderated panels comprised of banks and non–banks, corporates, B2B solution providers and payments networks. An industry case study on supply chain integration concluded the proceedings.

Speakers included representatives from Bank of America, Bank One Corporation, First Data Corporation, Medical Banking Exchange, Key Bank, US Bank PowerTrack, The Clearing House Payments Company, Elemica, Visa International, Accenture, Global eXchange Services, PeopleSoft, Vector SGI, Xign, Cisco Systems, GLS/Composites One, John Deere Credit and MindShare along with leading payments experts such as Peter Burns, Avivah Litan and Jeetu Patel.