The transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe have privatized their economies at an unprecendented speed in the 1990s. The expectation was that under private ownership, formerly state-owned firms would act as dynamic, profit-oriented players driving economic restructuring and growth....

This paper makes a study of payment systems in the countries of the enlargement of the European Union for the period 1996-2003 and its comparison with the members of the European and Monetary Union. The general tendency is of a movement from cash to alternative instruments of payment. However,...