Former executive vice president of secure payments of fintech
Organisation
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Biography
Jim Cunha was an Executive Vice President and former interim COO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. His entire career has focused on the interrelationship of payments, security, technology and innovation. In addition to Cunha’s interim CAO role, for 2022 he was responsible for financial management activities across all Federal Reserve Banks. Most recently, Cunha spearheaded the Boston Fed’s efforts to study distributed ledger technology, or blockchain, to determine potential benefits and risks in financial services for internal and external uses. He was also responsible for the Bank’s technology research related to central bank digital currencies (CBDC), including a joint research effort with MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative called “Project Hamilton”. Over the last couple of decades be built and ran a number of payment related systems for the U.S. Treasury, was responsible for ACH, Check and Cash operations and run the technology and computer operations groups. Cunha has worked at the Boston Fed since 1984. Prior to that, he worked at Fleet National Bank. He holds a bachelor’s in accounting and philosophy from Northeastern University and a bachelor’s in computer science from Rhode Island College.
