Step by step the Swedish economy became increasingly vulnerable to shocks. During 1990 matters came to a head. Competitiveness had been eroded by the relatively high inflation in the late 1980s, resulting in an overvalued currency. This caused exports to weaken and meant that the fixed exchange rate policy began to be questioned, leading to periods with relatively high nominal interest rates.
4  The Bahamian data reveal an increasing volume of transactions occurring outside of the physical branches at ATMs (which is still cash unfortunately), increasing use of credit and debit cards for electronic payments, and declining reliance on check writing. 5  Anecdotally, wire transfer costs have also slowed the transition from out of the use of checks for payroll processing for some firms.