Instant payments often aren’t “instant” at all, due to lags between when money is sent and received. These lags can be costly for people who need the money immediately to pay bills on time.

Some end up paying late or overdraft fees. Others are forced to turn to expensive alternative financial services, like payday loans.

Brian Clarke is a payments analyst and deputy director in the Regional & Community Outreach department at the Boston Fed. He spoke with us about the emergence of truly “real-time” instant payments, when money is sent and received in seconds. He says this speedy payment processing can really help small businesses and lower-income households avoid fees and costly services.

The FedNow Service is the Federal Reserve’s real-time instant payments infrastructure. Learn more about it at https://explore.fednow.org/about. For more interviews and analysis of the economy in New England and nationwide, visit BostonFed.org/SixHundredAtlantic.aspx. Subscribe to our email list to stay updated on new episodes.

How is tariff uncertainty affecting the outlooks of small and medium-sized businesses, and how will this impact consumers?

Boston Fed Research Director Egon Zakrajšek is part of a team at the Bank investigating this critical, ongoing question. He discusses how the team partnered with a survey research firm to reach out to hundreds of businesses for insights. And he shares key takeaways from the team’s findings, including the potential impacts of tariffs on inflation and consumer prices.

Egon Zakrajšek is an executive vice president and the director of research at the Boston Fed. Visit bostonfed.org to find his team’s three Current Policy Perspectives reports on tariffs: “Who Will Pay for Tariffs? Businesses’ Expectations about Costs and Prices,” “Effects of Tariff Uncertainty on the Outlook of Small and Medium-sized Businesses,” and “Small and Medium-sized Businesses’ Expectations Concerning Tariffs, Costs, and Prices.” 

For more interviews and analysis of the economy in New England and nationwide, visit BostonFed.org/SixHundredAtlantic.aspx. Subscribe to our email list to stay updated on new episodes.

At one time, the housing affordability crisis was associated with certain addresses. Often, they were in high-demand coastal cities and nearby communities.

Today, though, people from all corners of the country are dealing with crushing housing costs. In the latest episode of the Boston Fed’s Six Hundred Atlantic podcast, we examine the 2025 “The State of the Nation’s Housing” report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

Housing experts, including Boston Fed economist Paul Willen and Reserve Bank President and CEO Susan M. Collins, weigh in on what the crisis looks like for homeowners and renters and what can be done to ease the cost pressures.

Visit BostonFed.org to learn more about The State of the Nation’s Housing 2025 and check out material and videos from the event. For more interviews and analysis of the economy in New England and nationwide, visit BostonFed.org/SixHundredAtlantic.aspx. Subscribe to our email list to stay updated on new episodes.

Private credit, or loans by non-bank lenders, has grown rapidly in recent years. This lending is even approaching the volume of some traditional sources of business credit, like bank loans. As the rise of private credit funds changes the way companies borrow money, it’s also creating potential implications for financial stability.

John Levin is a senior markets specialist in the Supervision, Regulation & Credit Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He is the co-author of two studies examining the rise of private credit: “Could the Growth of Private Credit Pose a Risk to Financial System Stability?" and "Bank Lending to Private Equity and Private Credit Funds: Insights from Regulatory Data."

For more interviews and discussions on private credit and financial stability, visit BostonFed.org/SixHundredAtlantic.aspx, and subscribe to our email list to stay updated on new episodes.

People in the credit business are starting to see just how much AI can do for them. It can improve profits and lower defaults. It can predict demand for new services. It can see past credit scores and comprehensively assess lending risks. That’s why AI’s role in credit is only going to get bigger going forward. Some people are very excited about that. And some are very worried.

AI will lie unless you tell it not to. It will collude on pricing with other AI. Experts say those are a couple reasons why we need to proceed with caution and better understand potential hazards.

 

Read an outline of the keynote speech at the 68th Economic Conference by UC-Berkeley professor Adair Morse, “AI Innovation for Credit: Frontiers of Benefits & Red Flags.” Watch a recording of the speech.

Decentralized finance feels like the future. This category of financial services is built on blockchain technology and transacted solely in crypto. It’s executed by automated programs called “smart contracts,” which helps reduce costs. And advocates say DeFi is more democratic: Everyone involved is just an anonymous node on the blockchain, making favoritism impossible.

But how will it really play out? Some tell the Boston Fed’s podcast, Six Hundred Atlantic, that it requires too much tech savvy to be truly inclusive. Others worry about the safety of a “trustless system,” where the lack of an intermediary could make DeFi vulnerable to people with bad intent. And skeptics doubt decentralized finance can remain decentralized at all.

 

View the presentations New York University professor Hanna Halaburda and UC-Berkeley professor Christine Parlour submitted for the Boston Fed’s 68th Economic Conference. Watch the panel they participated in, titled “Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), and Smart Contracts: Hope or Hype?”

Financial technology, known as fintech, is everywhere. If you send money by phone or invest with the help of robo-advisors, you’re using it. Its proponents say by lowering costs, it can expand the range of financial services providers can offer and the pool of people who can afford them. 

But fintech presents risks, including to privacy. Fintech companies aren’t subject to the same regulations as traditional financial institutions when it comes to handling personal data. And some worry regulatory safeguards aren’t keeping up with fintech advances. 

Amid the uncertainty, fintech’s role in financial services keeps expanding. How will fintech change the landscape for consumers? Can banks adjust? And will it make a real difference for those long shut out of traditional financial services? 

Download the paper Harvard Business School professor Emily Williams presented at the Economic Conference, “Fintech, Financial Inclusion, and the Future of Finance.” Watch the session she spoke at, titled “Innovative Financial Technologies and Financial inclusion.”

What is the Beige Book? It’s the story of the economy that you can’t always see in the numbers. Eight times a year, each Federal Reserve Bank publishes a Beige Book after gathering real-world economic insight from regional business leaders and experts. 

Mary Burke is a principal economist and policy advisor with the New England Public Policy Center at the Boston Fed. She talks to Six Hundred Atlantic about what the Beige Book is and why it matters to the U.S. economy. 

Visit bostonfed.org to learn more about the Beige Book. For more interviews and analysis of the economy in New England and nationwide, visit BostonFed.org/SixHundredAtlantic.aspx. Subscribe to our email list to stay updated on new episodes.

The Fed’s latest small businesses survey found that 80% of respondents reported challenges related to how they send and receive payments, including credit card processing fees and slow payments systems.

Brian Clarke is a payments analyst and deputy director in the Regional & Community Outreach department at the Boston Fed. He breaks down the most important findings from the survey – and how advancements in payments technology might help businesses address their top challenges.

Visit bostonfed.org to learn more about payments-related findings from the Small Business Credit Survey. You can read the full report on fedsmallbusiness.org. For more interviews and analysis of the economy in New England and nationwide, visit BostonFed.org/SixHundredAtlantic.aspx. Subscribe to our email list to stay updated on new episodes. 

Synthetic identity fraud is a fast-growing and costly type of financial fraud, and its threat is increasing – thanks to generative AI.

Criminals use Gen AI to quickly create synthetic identities and make these fake identities seem more like real people so it’s easier to use them to steal.

Federal Reserve payments fraud expert Mike Timoney discusses what synthetic identity fraud is and how it’s evolved. He says one of the best tools to stop thieves who use generative AI in synthetic identity fraud … is AI.

Timoney is a vice president of secure payments at the Boston Fed. Visit BostonFed.org to learn more about how the  Federal Reserve is tracking the increase in synthetic identity fraud. You can also listen to a discussion with Timoney on why check fraud is rising, even as check usage declines. For more interviews and analysis of the economy in New England and nationwide, visit BostonFed.org/SixHundredAtlantic.aspx. Subscribe to our email list to stay updated on new episodes.