Law Commons^™

Uniformity And Diversity In Payment Systems, Clayton P. Gillette, Steven D. Walt

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The rules governing the transfer of value between users of payment systems differ among payment systems. Rules allocating loss from unauthorized payment, erroneous payment, and the reversibility of payment vary according to whether payment is made by check, credit or debit card, wholesale wire transfer, or letter of credit. Thirty-five years after the New Payments Code failed to attract enough support to become law, academics and practitioners recently have proposed that payment system rules be uniform. This Article rejects this initially attractive position. It argues that the optimal standardization of payment system rules allows diverse rules among payment systems. The …