Cost of Retail Payments – an Overview of Recent National Studies in Europe.

The presentation will provide an overview of studies on the social and private costs of retail payments conducted since 2013 in nine EU countries. Despite varying scopes and methodological differences, the overview shows that a comparison of results between 2009 and 2016 in Denmark and Italy, between 2015 and 2018 in Poland and between 2009 and 2017 in Portugal, points to decreasing overall social costs for retail payments relative to gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, the data suggest that changing payment habits – the shift to electronic payments and in particular debit cards – have an impact on unit costs, which represent the costs per transaction.