Looking back today, it has been a very exciting decade – too exciting perhaps – from a central banking perspective. High public debt levels restrained the fiscal capacity in a number of countries following the financial and economic meltdown. Thus, central banks were more or less left on their own to support economic activity.
An increasing number of banks are providing PC banking services and it will be interesting to see whether new product offerings currently being developed will substantially increase market penetration here, particularly as household PCs with modems become more ubiquitous. Experience with stored-value cards has not come close to meeting the expectations that some had several years ago.