Owned by nobody and controlled by an almost immutable protocol the Bitcoin payment system is a platform with two main constituencies: users and profit seeking miners who maintain the system's infrastructure. The paper seeks to understand the economics of the system: How does the system raise...

We shed light on the demand for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as a means of payment, based on survey payment data. We provide a quantitative framework to assess transactional demand for CBDC at the point of sale, accommodating a wide range of design choices. We develop a structural...

Instant, or fast, payments are credit transfers completed and settled within seconds or minutes. They have low costs, reduce payment risk, and have significantly replaced the use of cash, cards, or check and direct debit payments. We note the role played by regulators in promoting instant...

This paper investigates the impact on the network growth of the level of merchant discount, the level of Multilateral Interchange Fee (MIF), and the consumers' and the merchants' awareness of positive network effects. In an artificial market, in which issuers and acquirers belong to the same...