Dr Wilko Bolt appointed Professor of Payment Systems at VU Amsterdam

Dr Wilko Bolt (1968) has been appointed Professor of Payment Systems at the School of Business and Economics of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). Bolt says: “Payments lie at the intersection of monetary economics, banking behaviour and industrial organisation.”

Bolt will study the behaviour of the various participants in payments, from consumers to retailers and from banks to fintech companies. In his view, payments lie at the intersection of monetary economics, banking behaviour and industrial organisation. “Pricing, competition, security and regulation play an important role,” Bolt says. “Consider, for example, all the rules that Brussels imposes on payment services: they make the economic trade-offs even more complex.” Innovation and technology in payments are also high on Bolt’s research agenda. New participants are entering the market and affecting banks. The curriculum will include fintech, disruptive technologies, blockchain and virtual currencies. “Innovations will significantly disrupt traditional business models, that much is certain. But how this will unfold requires further research,” Bolt says.

Teaching

Bolt will also teach. “I want to enthuse students about this new field. Payments fulfil a core function in the economy and have an increasingly international dimension. It is a dynamic and complex field in which the interests of a large number of parties converge. Payments are not a ‘free lunch’, and allocating their costs is a complex issue. The various market participants compete with one another, while cooperation is essential to everyday payments at the same time. Added to this are all the innovations bringing major changes to consumer payment behaviour and the digital infrastructure. They create new opportunities, but also new risks and new questions. I look forward to giving students the opportunity to research these hot issues in payments.”

New chair

Payment Systems is a new part-time chair within the School of Business and Economics of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The field of payments has developed rapidly in recent years. The new chair is an initiative of VU’s Finance Department, the Dutch Payments Association and De Nederlandsche Bank. Piet Mallekoote, Managing Director of the Dutch Payments Association, says: “Reliable, secure and well-functioning payments are of great societal importance to consumers and businesses, and to the functioning of the economy. In our view, this calls for a coherent academic examination of the various relevant aspects. It can help make the already highly efficient Dutch payment system even better. We are therefore delighted with this unique new chair at VU, to which we are pleased to contribute financially.”

Wilko Bolt

Wilko Bolt has worked as a senior economist at De Nederlandsche Bank since 1996. As a researcher, he has also worked at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His current work includes business-cycle research and policy, and research into payments. Bolt received his PhD from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 1997 for a microeconomics thesis entitled ‘Theory of negotiation’. Since then, he has published extensively on a wide range of topics in game theory, banking behaviour and payments.