1  … but remaining deficiencies in the infrastructure On the other hand, things have moved rather more slowly with regard to integration of cross-border money market trading against collateral. This is because it is more difficult to equate the value of these different types of collateral when they fall under different national legal systems. Securities trading between different countries is on the whole made more difficult by the fact that the infrastructure has still not been adapted to making transactions between buyers and sellers in different countries as simply and cheaply as within individual countries. One of the most cited examples of obstacles to cross-border financial transactions is the cost of making payments from one country to another. Now there is an EC regulation that prescribes that the price of making payments in euro between countries should not be higher than the same payments within a country, but the underlying infrastructure has involved de facto higher costs for making payments across borders. Other examples of national differences concern provisions aimed at establishing good consumer protection, but which make it more expensive and difficult in practice to create an efficient competition across borders, as the suppliers of financial products must adapt their marketing strategies to each individual country. One might have believed that the Internet would break this national fragmentation and open up the way for a demand-based international market for traditional bank services, but so far electronic banking services have mainly been used on a national basis.
2  BIS central bankers’ speeches