This could be promoted further if complemented by  6 Minouche Shafik, “A new heart for a changing payments system”, speech, Bank of England, London, 27 January  2016. For more about the early days of clearing cheques, see the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company, “History of the cheque”, https://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/information-hub/history-cheque/clearings-early-days. 6 [15]  common Nordic payment solutions or by making payments between existing domestic schemes feasible.7  Lessons learned Drawing conclusions based on a period spanning millennia can only be strongly subjective. Yet, certain factors stand out to me as constants during the history of payments. Some may even be more relevant than ever, one could argue. Allow me now to elaborate further on my four basic lessons, before I turn to our ongoing work to develop the current infrastructure. Trust and uniformity of money is essential Firstly, for money to work properly it needs to have the trust of its users. Otherwise, buyers and sellers will look for other mediums of exchange. This increases transaction costs, hampering trade and economic activity. Historically, trust has benefitted from a credible issuer, that is, from money being a claim on a party that everyone expects to honour its obligations. This speaks in favour of giving the right to issue money to the state with its powers of taxation. This is also what happened in most countries with the Bank of England as an early role model. In addition, I also believe in the value to society of having one commonly agreed monetary unit in a given jurisdiction.
The preparatory steps that we have decided to take will provide a basis for deciding whether the Riksbank should enter into contractual negotiations with the Eurosystem. In practice, we will analyse thoroughly a number of key issues, ranging from the consequences for monetary policy and financial stability to governancerelated aspects and possible contingency solutions. This entails also further study of potential requirements stemming from the Swedish protective security legislation. Now, this is not something that will happen overnight. A first transaction using Swedish kronor on T2 or T2S is likely to happen perhaps seven or eight years ahead. The work following a decision to proceed – negotiation with the Eurosystem, implementation, testing, etc. – will take several years. Yet, my message to Swedish banks listening to or reading this is, I would like to bring the message across that this is no small task, neither on our side or yours. We will invite for further dialogue around this in due course. Serving society beyond interbank infrastructure In addition to the just mentioned development plans for the next generation of payments systems, we also conduct work that more directly focuses on end-users rather than wholesale payments. E-krona: maintaining the public’s access to central bank money Against the background of declining cash use in society, the Riksbank began work in 2016 on analysing opportunities and challenges associated with issuing a Swedish krona in digital form to the public: an e-krona. When we started this investigative work, we were very much alone.