The Role of Digital Adoption in relationship between payment systems development and economic growth

This paper addresses the link between payment systems development and Economic growth and also investigates the role of technological growth and especially digital adoption status in this relationship. In this order, we use cross country data to compare Iranian payment systems situation with other countries in different aspects. Data analysis shows that Iran's payment systems are weaker in some respects, such as the dominant role of the old settlement systems in large-value payments, the integration of sales terminals, and the small share of new payment instruments (such as the Internet and mobile banking) in transactions. We apply this panel database to estimate the effect of infrastructure development in payment systems on economic growth.  Based on the estimation results, robust evidence confirms the positive impact of payment system development on economic growth. Although the role of digital adoption in this relationship induces the payment system development positively affects real sector activities only in countries with high or medium digital adoption. Moreover, the impact is stronger in the group of countries categorized at a high level of digital adoption.