It might be instructive to review briefly the history of retail payments to understand how the tradeoff among convenience, confidence, and complexity has worked. Looking back, the check was used in North America as long ago as colonial times. Businesses, in particular, were early users.
Following subsequent recovery to 19.5 per cent per annum, it has plummeted to 9.5 per cent in 2012–13. Consequently interest cost to sales ratio rose to 3.8 per cent. It will thus seem that deceleration in sales growth has accentuated the interest burden on the corporates at the micro level.