Retail payments: integration and innovation

Time: 25-26 May 2009
Venue: European Central Bank, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Joint European Central Bank & De Nederlandsche Bank conference on "Retail payments: integration and innovation".

The European retail payment market is in the middle of a transition phase. The creation of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) represents an important step in the completion of Europe’s monetary union. SEPA will have a decisive influence on Europe’s future payments landscape as it accelerates the development of the continent’s retail payments market into increasingly integrated and consolidated market structures. The increasing speed of technological developments will require SEPA participants to be flexible in their business activities and to be open to new ideas. Given these fundamental changes, it is important to understand the economics driving future developments and to take a forward-looking perspective anticipating the factors that are likely to affect payment developments.

The objectives of this conference are twofold: first, this conference aims to improve the general understanding of retail payment economics and, more specifically, to help identify possible developments and dynamics that will shape the future retail payments landscape; second, this conference aims to provide a forum for debate among market participants, policy-makers and researchers.

To this end, the conference organisers invite submissions of original, theoretical and empirical papers
from interested economists and researchers – whether in academia, central banks or financial institutions – covering one of the following themes:

• Recent developments in retail payments and retail payment economics
• Payment habits and the use of different payment instruments
• Consolidation, scale effects, network externalities and efficiency in the payments industry
• Cost, pricing, network externalities and competition issues relating to retail payments
• Integration in the euro/European retail payment market
• Retail banking and payments
• The future of retail payments
• Payment innovation and dynamics, including e-invoicing and internet/mobile payments
• SEPA and eSEPA

Deadline for submissions: 25 January 2009

For more info http://www.ecb.int/...