Doutoramento em Economia
Essays on the use of payment instruments
Vânia Gramaça Silva

Orientação: Esmeralda de Jesus Ratinho Lopes Arranhado Ramalho & Carlos Manuel Rodrigues Vieira

The use of non-cash payment instruments in European Union (EU) countries changed quite noticeably in the past years. Electronic payment instruments usage grew, while paper-based payments declined. The objective of this thesis, comprised by three essays, is to provide empirical evidence of the impact on the use of cheques, bank cards, and credit transfers of a selected set of specific measures. As cheques are still a relevant question of concern for some countries due to their considerable social costs and risks, the first essay analyses the determinants of cheque usage in the EU, with data for the period 2000-2012. The study focuses on the effects of the application of fees in a framework where unfunded cheques are considered as an autonomous type of crime in some countries. The second essay examines the impact on cards usage of the adoption of the EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) standard in the EU between 2006 and 2011. This technology protects information more effectively than magnetic stripes and aims to reduce fraud at the point-of-sale. Finally, the third essay investigates the effect of the implementation process of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) – a project that intends to increase integration in retail payments – on credit transfers usage in euro area countries from 2008 to 2013. The results obtained suggest that: (i) the existence of fees influences negatively cheque usage, even when there are legal elements that increase security; (ii) the progress in the adoption of EMV technology had a positive effect in the use of cards; and (iii) the evolution in the migration to SEPA formats had a positive impact on the share of credit transfer payments.

Keywords : Bank card, Cheque, Credit transfer, EMV, Panel data, Retail Payments, SEPA