Malloy's Contemporary Payment Systems brings the edgy excitement back to drafts, notes and bank collections, with contemporary practice embracing electronic funds transfers, wire transfers, digital letters of credit, and the explosive emergence of "crypto-currencies" such as Bitcoins and the like. The book employs a nimble pedagogy to bring payment systems to new generations of law students facing fresh demands of practice in this area. It offers a leaner, more systemic approach, with appropriate topical cross-references among the chapters in an effort to avoid the "hyper-compartmentalizing" that typically prevents students from grasping the systemic characteristics of this area of law and practice.

This new book develops, within each chapter and across all chapters, a continuous narrative arc of problems and hypotheticals involving the continuing adventures of BayerCorp, SallerCo, and their respective executives, employees, banks, and other supporting characters. This arc helps students learn more effectively and retain what they learn more securely, because their understanding of concepts, rules, and procedures is anchored to the story line.

The book uses a building-block approach with its problems—they start out relatively simple and gradually take on sophistication and complexity as the narrative arc cumulates. The book also makes extensive use of graphics as an integral part of both the conceptual analysis and the narrative arc, making the book particularly good for the many contemporary students who are visual learners.