E-payments in Europe conference summary and final version of issues paper now available on the ECB’s website

The European Central Bank (ECB) held a conference on “E-payments without frontiers” on 10 November 2004. The aim of the conference was to provide an overview of recent developments and issues related to e-payments. The scope was on retail services that support e-commerce transactions (business to consumer, B2C) or electronic payments between consumers (person to person, P2P) and that constitute new concepts, beyond the basic traditional payment instruments provided by the banking industry. Recent developments in the e-payments market were especially discussed in a pan-European and regulatory context.

A detailed summary of the event is now available on the ECB’s website, together with an online documentation of the individual presentations by speakers.

In the context of preparing the conference on “E-payments without frontiers”, the ECB had also produced an issues paper under the same title. The paper covered observations on innovation in retail payments, challenges to be faced before a mature and integrated market can be achieved, and selected issues regarding the regulatory framework. The ECB had invited all interested parties to comment on this issues paper by 17 December 2004.

On the basis of all comments received the ECB has produced a final version of the issues paper. It is publicly available on the ECB’s website now.