Thirdly, the private and public sector complement one another by filling different roles. While the public sector provides trust and stability, the private sector takes care of innovation. Throughout history, then, occasionally the public sector has had to take the lead in creating changes that are beneficial to society. Fourthly, network and scale effects are important factors to consider within payments. They generate barriers to entry, but also leave room for efficiency gains. Though not new, both effects may have been accentuated by the digitalisation of payments. After the historical walkthrough, I will explain those observations further and put them into the context of our current work on developing the payment infrastructure. Finally, I will say a few words about the Riksbank’s e-krona project and our involvement in international work to improve cross-border payments. Those initiatives are targeted more at end-users of payment services. Yet, both can equally well be related to the lessons just highlighted. 2 [15]  The history of payments – fasten your seatbelts! With the brief time I have at my disposal now, a tour through the history of payments must be limited to picking out a few main developments. However, for those with more time to spend, I can certainly recommend this subject for further study. In addition to useful insights into how we got to where we are now, I dare to say that it is packed with drama unfolding around great historical events. I will cover a few of them here.
The ‘experiment’ was ended by the outbreak of the Civil War when a national banking system was established. Sweden also provides a case in point. Following the collapse of Stockholms Banco, the newly founded Riksbank was not allowed to issue banknotes until 1701.4 Then, as commercial banks started to emerge in the 1830s, they were granted similar concessions. Over a period, notes from ten to fifteen issuers were in circulation, causing much confusion. This was brought to a halt with the Sveriges Riksbank Act from 1897, which ensured the Riksbank its current monopoly – with a unified national currency as a result.5  The rise of financial infrastructures As the number of banks surged, so did the need for structure. In London around 1770, ‘walk clerks’ ran between banks to clear and settle cheques. One day, the story goes, two of them were having lunch at the Five Bells tavern in Lombard Street. Tired after a busy morning, one came with the suggestion that all clerks  3 See Gunnar Wetterberg, ‘’Money and power”, Sveriges Riksbank, Atlantis (2009), and Klas Fregert, ‘’Sveriges  Riksbank: 350 years in the making’’, in Sveriges Riksbank and the History of Central Banking (2018): 90–142, for more about the history of Sveriges Riksbank. 4 From 1701, the bank issued transportsedlar (transport bills). While notes-issuing was authorized in 1701, they became accepted for tax payments in 1726. Notes with a fixed nominal value that did not need to be transferred in writing were issued from 1745.