In addition, inflation mostly affects social classes less able to protect themselves against changes in nominal prices, if only because the larger part of their financial assets is held in a current account with no or fixed interest. Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, inflation tends to discourage long-term saving, especially that directed towards pension funds. This prevents people from securing their savings for long-term purposes in a reliable way. In the long run this could affect the people’s sense of belonging to society. As John Stuart Mill once said, money (we might say price stability) is one of those instruments whose importance is only felt when put out of order. Over the last century, the European economies and societies have had sufficient experience of this to value the wisdom of this judgement. Times may, of course, have changed. You may think that this concern is now a bit old-fashioned. I would just say that monitoring and combating inflationary pressures is a permanent task. It is an essential feature of a market economy that it will generate inflationary or, less often, deflationary tensions from time to time. It is not because the river is regulated that the dam is useless! What about the other policy areas? How can they best contribute to sustaining high non-inflationary growth? Taking stock of the broad policy developments currently observed in the euro area might suggest that there is little to worry about.
In the same period, we have reduced cheque usage by more than 40% to 119 million cheques. We have almost doubled the number of point-of-sale (POS) terminals to over 407,000 units. Debit card transactions have also increased by more than six times to 162 million transactions in 2017. All these are achievements that we should be proud of as a collective industry. The progress that we have achieved so far is only possible with the collective contribution of all in the industry. This annual award ceremony recognises the achievements of those who have contributed to the progress, modernisation and enhancement of our payment systems. 1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  While we celebrate our achievements, we need to forge ahead with greater vigour and perseverance, especially to displace cash. Cash remains prevalent in most retail transactions in Malaysia. Managing cash is expensive. This is most evident among lower tier merchants, who continue to prefer transacting in cash. It is more costly to use cash, as you know, and much cheaper, efficient and secure to adopt e-payments. It is a cost effective solution that makes business sense. Based on a study by the Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest in 2014, a customer who uses mobile and online banking instead of going to a physical bank branch stands to enjoy about 24 hours of time saved and about 10 kilometers of travelling distance saved per year.