Regional Differences in Retail Payment Habits in Italy

Guerino Ardizzi (), Elisa Bonifacio (), Cristina Demma () and Laura Painelli ()
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Guerino Ardizzi: Bank of Italy
Cristina Demma: Bank of Italy

No 576, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: Economic operators have a number of different procedures and instruments for regulating their cashless monetary transactions safely and quickly. Nevertheless, divergences in the use of non-cash payment instruments persist among European countries and, in Italy, between the Centre and North and the southern regions. In this paper, we study which factors are associated with the backwardness of South and Islands in the use of non-cash payment instruments. We focus on the period 2013-18, when there was a widespread increase in non-cash transactions among the main advanced economies, spurred by technological innovation and the new legal framework supporting security, efficiency and transparency in digital payments. We find that the main factors associated with a lower demand for cash are technological innovation in payments and the population’s digital skills and education levels; criminality and tax evasion are also significantly and positively correlated to the use of cash, but their correlations with the observed heterogeneity among Italian provinces are not predominant.

Keywords: payment instruments; cash demand; retail payments; technological innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E41 E42 G21 G23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-eur, nep-mac and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_576_20

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