László Kajdi
- 23 September 2022
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2729Details
- Abstract
- Payments are a key focus of central banks, as - together with the safe, efficient operation of the payments market – wide access to cash is fundamentally important for a healthy economy. In this study, three main research areas were investigated: 1. socioeconomic characteristics that can be associated with financial inclusion; 2. factors behind consumers´ payment choices; 3. underlying factors for holding cash in a wallet (i.e. for transactional purposes). Regression results for the first research question confirmed the findings of international literature, i.e. mainly older age, lower income and lower educational level is associated with the lack of access to electronic payment options. The study pursues various approaches to investigate consumer payments choices, and the results from most models showed that those with higher level of income and education, or lower level of cash income are more likely to prefer and actually use electronic payment methods. Finally, concerning the holding of cash the initial expectations were confirmed i.e. those who do not use cash for daily transactions tend to keep less cash in their wallet, while those who indicated preference for cash payments or higher importance of cash payment option are more likely to keep higher cash amounts.
- JEL Code
- D11 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Consumer Economics: Theory
D12 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
E42 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Monetary Systems, Standards, Regimes, Government and the Monetary System, Payment Systems
J33 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Compensation Packages, Payment Methods
- 19 May 2022
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 294Details
- Abstract
- The paper provides an overview of studies on the social and private costs of retail payments conducted since 2013 in nine EU countries and collates the results obtained. Social costs of retail payments are the overall costs resulting from providing payment services to society and deriving from the resource costs incurred by all parties along the payment chain. Private costs, in contrast, are the costs incurred by the individual stakeholder only, such as banks and other payment intermediaries. Understanding the social and private costs of retail payments is crucial for assessing the impact of the rapidly changing retail payment landscape, such as the shift to electronic payments, and for designing strategies for moving towards cost efficient retail payments. Despite varying scopes and methodological differences, the analysis reached the following findings: a comparison of results between 2009 and 2016 in Denmark and Italy, between 2015 and 2018 in Poland and between 2009 and 2017 in Portugal, points to decreasing overall social costs for retail payments relative to gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, the data suggest that changing payment habits – the shift to electronic payments and in particular debit cards – have an impact on unit costs, which represent the costs per transaction. The unit costs of debit card payments have decreased over time and the gap between the unit costs of cash and those for debit cards has narrowed. This suggests that the increasing number of debit card payments, to which high fixed costs are attached, has led to lower unit costs relative to those of cash. The only study on the costs of retail payments in Europe, published as an ECB occasional paper, dates from 2012 and is based on data from 2009. Although more recent surveys at national level are available, no single source exists that sheds light on recent information on the costs of retail payments in Europe. Since the national surveys follow different approaches, in terms of both scope and methodology used, for obtaining the costs of retail payments, the resu
- JEL Code
- D23 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Organizational Behavior, Transaction Costs, Property Rights
D24 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Production, Cost, Capital, Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity, Capacity
O52 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economywide Country Studies→Europe
E42 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Monetary Systems, Standards, Regimes, Government and the Monetary System, Payment Systems