An Occasional Paper published by the ECB in September 2012 entitled “The social and private costs of cash and retail payment instruments – A European perspective” shows that in Europe debit card payments have on average the lowest social costs per euro transaction value. In other words, society may benefit from an increase in their usage.
The most obvious source of financial market fragmentation is the existence of different currencies. As we all know, in the euro area this source of fragmentation was eliminated by the introduction of the euro. But even before 1999 there were various political initiatives with the objective of overcoming market fragmentation in Europe.