Target is a real time gross settlement (RTGS) large value payment network operated by European central banks that eliminates systemic risk. Euro1 is a privately operated delayed net settlement (DNS) network that reduces substantially systemic risk but does not eliminate it. This difference makes...

Payment scale economies affect banking costs, competition in payment services, and pricing. Our scale measure relates operating cost to physical measures of European banking "output", finding large economies. This differs from relating total cost to the value of balance sheet assets (the...

Banks supply payment services that underpin the smooth operation of the economy. To ensure an efficient payment system, it is important to maintain competition among payment service providers but data available to gauge the degree of competition are quite limited. We propose and implement a...

We survey the limited data that exists concerning the cost of making/receiving a payment by banks, retailers, and other parties to a transaction. Since an electronic payment costs between one-third and onehalf that of a paper-based instrument, a country may save 1% of its GDP annually as it...

The goal of SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) is to facilitate the emergence of a competitive, intra-European market by making cross-border payments as easy as domestic transactions. With cross-border inter-operability for electronic payments, card transactions will increasingly replace cash and...

Payment scale economies affect banking costs, competition in payment services, and pricing. Our scale measure relates operating cost to physical measures of European banking "output", finding large economies. This differs from relating total cost to the value of balance sheet assets (the...

The substitution of noncash (check, giro, and credit and debit card) payments for cash transactions is difficult to gauge because there are no data series on the actual value or volume of cash transactions in any country.However, determining the degree of cash substitution is important because...