Benjamin GEVA
Visiting Professor
Visiting Period : 3 February 2014 to 21 February 2014

Dr. Benjamin Geva is a Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. He specializes in commercial, financial and banking law, particularly in payment and credit instruments, electronic banking and the regulation of the payment system. He obtained his LL.B. (cum laude) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1970) and his LL.M. and S.J.D. at Harvard. He practised with Blake, Cassels and Graydon in Toronto and is now counsel with Torys where he is a member of the Payments and Cards Practice Group.

Under the IMF technical assistance program he has advised and drafted key financial sector and payment systems legislation for the authorities of several countries, particularly, on missions for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Haiti, Yugoslavia (Serbia), Cambodia, Afghanistan, Timor-Leste, and Sri Lanka. He has been on committees and drafting working groups in the areas of personal property security, securities transfers, letters of credits & independent guarantees, and payment law. He is the founding editor in chief of the Banking and Finance Law Review (BFLR) and has written extensively in his areas of expertise, including a monograph on Financing Consumer Sales and Product Defences in Canada and the US (Toronto: Carswell, 1984), a treatise on the Law of Electronic Funds Transfer (New York: Matthew Bender, 1992, kept current with annual updates, since 1997 with contributors), a comparative law text on Bank Collections and Payment Transactions (Oxford: OUP, 2001), and a monograph on The Payment Order of Antiquity and the Middle Ages -- A Legal History (Oxford and Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2011). His current research is on the bank money, bank deposits, negotiable instruments & funds transfers, and payment and settlement systems.

Today, mobile phones are multi-media, multi-purpose digital communication devices facilitating not only voice calls but also data transfer. A mobile (or 'digital') payment is carried out pursuant to a data transfer. The mobile device could be used to access a bank account, credit line or a stored-value or 'prepaid' product. The device could also be used by its holder to buy a product or service directly from the mobile network operator (MNO) and have its price added to the periodic mobile bill.

Mobile payments present new dimensions to the landscape of non-cash payments. Most notably, they involve communication carriers acting in the payment arena - not as back-office, third-party service providers on behalf of banks, but rather, as drivers (or at least co-drivers), sitting in the front seat, in a direct contractual relationship with users. As such, they increasingly seek to provide payment services on their own.

Mobile payments have boosted e-commerce and evolved in the context of exciting developments in retail payments and money transmission in general. They introduced an array of regulatory and legal issues relating to the non-traditional roles played by participants and the complexity of the legal relations and the market place. Resolution of all such issues requires first, and most of all, an understanding of the ways in which payment mechanism operates and the actual role of each participant.

With the view of equipping lawyers and regulators with the ability to address these issues, the seminar will cover them, taking off from the North American, particularly Canadian perspective, and yet expanding the scope to point at developments elsewhere.