Publication: Stages of Development of Payment Systems: Leapfrogging across Countries and MENA's Place in the World
Date
2020-01
ISSN
Published
2020-01
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper studies the relationship
between the level of economic development and the incidence
of three forms of payments across countries, namely the
incidence of bank accounts, digital payments, and mobile
money accounts among the adult populations across countries.
It presents simple statistical tests of leapfrogging, the
phenomenon by which poor countries surpass rich countries in
the provision of payments mechanisms. It contributes to a
broader and long-standing literature on stages of
development, as well as to the literature on financial
development and access to finance. The findings suggest that
there is evidence of "absolute" and
"relative" leapfrogging, with both terms defined
in the paper. In addition, the Middle East and North Africa
region, on average, suffers from a notable underperformance
gap across all observed stages of payment-systems
development. This finding suggests that the region suffers
from structural impediments to the development of its
financial and banking systems that go well beyond the
adoption of digital-technology tools.
Citation
“Gevaudan, Clement; Lederman, Daniel. 2020. Stages of Development of Payment Systems: Leapfrogging across Countries and MENA's Place in the World. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9104. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33153 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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