Central banks analyse issues concerning retail payments - or just payments - to be able to promote optimal means of payment. Over the years, electronic payments - i.e. payments initiated and settled electronically - have gradually replaced manual paper-based payments on the grounds of...

Recent advances in telecommunications, particularly using fibre technologies, permit many services based on data-processing to be performed anywhere in the world. They thus become tradable and subject to the laws of comparative advantage. A good example is data-processing within large...