10  For example, over the past ten years, most major emerging-market economies have implemented real-time gross settlement payment systems, which allow markets to rapidly settle payments and other obligations with finality during the  BIS Review 112/2006  3  •  As financial innovations such as credit card networks and money market mutual funds become more widespread, particularly in economies that had experienced high inflations, households and firms have been able to reduce their holdings of cash and central bank reserves, thus shrinking the "base" for the inflation tax.
Nonetheless, while the decline in non-oil import prices likely accounts for some of the weakness in inflation over the past few years, these prices have begun rising again in the past year at a time when inflation remains relatively low.