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...

Cash are socially less costly than payment cards for all payments below DKK 29, while Dankort, the national Danish debit card, are cheaper for all other point-of-sale payments. These results are derived from calculations that divide costs of payments into fixed, variable-transaction-dependent,...

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...