From the time of its very founding, the Federal Reserve has had the responsibility to foster an efficient, safe and accessible payment system. During much of 1998 and 1999, our primary objective in this regard was to help banks and other participants in the payment system maintain smooth operations as the century date change passed.
Domestically, we achieved this goal by working directly with the banking sector. Internationally, I was privileged to work through multilateral groups to raise the awareness of the international regulatory community of the nature of the Y2K challenge. Now, we can take a longer-term perspective and consider how we might facilitate innovation in the payment system.