Abstract

China Payment and Settlement System Development Report（2017）, as the annual report of Research Center of Payment&Settlement, aims to summarize and reflect the various aspects of China's payment and settlement system and their implication for real economy. It tries to cover the reform and evolution of institutions, rules, and policies on payment and settlement system over the world and track the theoretical frontiers in this area. With ample data and detailed analysis, the report tries to provide reliable and useful references for financial institutes, academic researchers, and regulatory authority. Since its first publication in 2013, the three issues of the annual report have attracted general and intense attention of academics, market professionals, and policy makers.

For the understanding of modern payment system, three perspectives from an advanced standpoint are needed: the one based on financial market infrastructure;the one based on national payment system; and the one based on decentralization of payment. With its rising role in economic and financial operation and academic research, the payment system has got highly emphasis from our central government. As technology and institution evolution has become the two driving factors for modern financial market infrastructure, it's imperative that we achieve a deep understanding of the development of payment system based on its history and ensure its efficient and safe operation to promote the social welfare. We hope China Payment and Settlement System Development Report can be a part of the effort.

The report consists of two parts: general reports and special topics. The general report presents a panorama of China's payment and settlement system, including its evolution path, current status, existed problems, and future trends and explores the relationship between payment system indexes with macroeconomic variables, regional development, financial risk, and monetary policy with quantitative methods. Special topics cover the practice of payment and settlement system in foreign countries and provide a selective survey of hot issues in this area, including a translation of The Federal Reserve Payments Study 2016. We expect this report to become a platform for the communication between Research Center of Payment &Settlement and all the peoples and institutes interested in this significant area to contribute to the development of China's payment and settlement system.