What are the benefits provided by a payment system? What are the tradeoffs in public versus private payment systems and in restricted versus open payments arrangements? Modern payment systems encompass a variety of institutional designs with varying degrees of counterparty protection. We develop...

Foreign exchange transactions are subject to a unique type of settlement risk. This risk ultimately stems from the difficulty of coordinating separate settlements in two different currencies. Settlement of foreign exchange transactions through the proposed CLS ("Continuous Linked Settlement")...

Using a neoclassical monetary model, we investigate the welfare cost of a payment system that operates as a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system. We illustrate how the cost of such systems does not ultimately derive from factors such as "payments gridlock" but instead from the credit...

Households and businesses in the United States prefer to use check payment over less costly, electronic means of payment. Earlier studies have focused on check "float," that is, the time lag between receipt and clearing, as a potential explanation for the continued popularity of checks. An...

Previous comparative analyses of gross and net settlement have focused on the credit risk of the central counterparty in net settlement arrangements and on the incentives for participants to alter the risk of the portfolio under net settlement. By modeling the trading economy that generates the...

We measure consumers' use of cash by harmonizing payment diary surveys from seven countries. The seven diary surveys were conducted in 2009 (Canada), 2010 (Australia), 2011 (Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands), and 2012 (the United States). Our paper finds cross-country differences -...

This paper documents the recent performance of European electronic purses. It presents data on 16 such schemes, and compares their penetration and usage rates. These rates are shown to differ substantially. A number of schemes are doing increasingly well and in all probability are here to stay....

Although euro banknotes and coins have been in circulation for fifteen years, not much is known about the actual use of cash by households. This paper presents an estimation of the number and value of cash transactions in all 19 euro area countries in 2016, based on survey results. It presents...

The ability to accurately estimate the extent to which the failure of a bank disrupts the financial system is very valuable for regulators of the financial system. One important part of the financial system is the interbank payment system. This paper develops a robust measure, SinkRank, that...

We use a game theoretical framework to analyze the intraday behavior of banks with respect to settlement of interbank claims in a real time gross settlement setting. We find that the game played by banks depends upon the intraday credit policy of the central bank and that it encompasses two...