The Costs of Paying – Private and Social Costs of Cash and Card Payments

Mats Bergman (), Gabriela Guibourg () and Björn Segendorf ()
Additional contact information
Mats Bergman: Department of Economics, Postal: Södertörn University College, SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
Gabriela Guibourg: Research Department, Central Bank of Sweden, Postal: Sveriges Riksbank, SE-103 37 Stockholm, Sweden
Björn Segendorf: International Secretariat, Postal: Sveriges Riksbank, SE-103 37 Stockholm, Sweden

No 212, Working Paper Series from Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden)

Abstract: Despite the central role of payments in theoretical and policy oriented economics, there is surprisingly little known about the costs of different payment instruments. We estimate social and private costs of cash, debit and credit card payments in Sweden in 2002. The combined social cost of providing these payment services is approximately 0.4 per cent of GDP. Debit and credit cards are socially less costly than cash for payments above EURO 8 and EURO 18, respectively. Corresponding thresholds for consumers’ private costs are somewhat higher. Data indicate a too extensive use of cash relative to card payments in terms of both private and social costs.

Keywords: Cash payments; Card payments; Social costs; Private costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D23 D24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2007-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.riksbank.se/upload/Dokument_riksbank/Ka ... kingPapers/WP212.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:rbnkwp:0212

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden) Sveriges Riksbank, SE-103 37 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lena Löfgren ().