(Source: Measuring Financial Inclusion, The Global Findex Database, World Bank, April 2012). The share of cash payments as a percentage of the number of payments in each country is highest in GR, BG, RO, IT (Source: Schmiedel, H., Kostova, G. and Ruttenberg, W. “The Social and Private Costs of Retail Payment Instruments – A European Perspective”. ECB Occasional Paper No 137, September 2012).
In its simplicity this comment touched on one of the main points of the debate on the importance of the quantity of money.