The Payment System: Structure, Efficiency, Innovation and Regulation

David Mayes, Iftekhar Hasan, Timo Iivarinen, Karlo Kauko, Kari Kemppainen, Tanai Khiaonarong, Kari Korhonen, Harry Leinonen, Markku Malkamäki, Alistair Milne, Kirsi Ripatti, Heiko Schmiedel, Oz Shy, Juha Tarkka and Jukka Topi

Chapter 2 in The Future of Financial Markets, 2006, pp 12-59 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract It is easy to under-estimate the importance of the payment system and its contribution to the economy because it is largely out of sight. In some countries the costs of the payment system can amount to 3 per cent of GDP (Humphrey et al., 1997, p. 33). The costs of making payments can differ across countries by an order of ten, which could have a major impact on the development of the financial system and the ability to respond rapidly to new challenges and opportunities. This is particularly true for the exploitation of cross-border transactions in the EU. These issues could readily merit a book on their own. However, these aspects of financial ‘plumbing’ tend to be regarded as dull compared with banking and monetary policy. In this chapter, after a short introduction summarising the nature of the payment system and its structure, we consider just three main issues that affect the likely future development of the system: its efficiency in various countries round the world and the scope for improvement by moving to best practice; the nature of innovation in the industry and the potential for new more efficient systems both within and between countries; the role of regulators in shaping the future.

Keywords: Financial Market; Central Bank; Credit Card; Euro Area; Payment System (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:palchp:978-0-230-21231-2_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230212312

DOI: 10.1057/9780230212312_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().