These included such things as: the timeliness of payments; accessibility; ease of use; ease of integration into other processes (such as business systems); and safety and reliability. Examining the services the payments system offers in terms of these attributes strongly suggests the areas where greater innovation in the payments system is needed, and where the underlying infrastructure might be imposing constraints on innovation.
Second, the Board has considered developments in retail payment systems around the world. An understanding of what is available elsewhere and whether those things are valued and adopted by the users of payment systems is a very important common-sense test when considering what our own system ought to look like.