Media In this section you will find all current news stories relating to Consult Hyperion, as well as being able to access past and present issues of our quarterly newsletters (Chyppings), case studies, podcasts, blogs and our Company Twitter feed. Bedtime reading [ Dave Birch ] You may have gone for fifty shades or the new JK, but I've been tucked up with "The Social and Private Costs of Retail Payment Instruments -- A European Perspective" by Heiko Schmiedel, Gergana Kostova and Wiebe Ruttenberg (European Central Bank Occasional Paper Series no.137). You probably saw the headline results. Cash payments account for nearly half of the total costs but, as the most commonly used payment instrument, has on average, the lowest social costs per transaction, at _0,42, closely followed by debit cards with costs of _0,70 to society. Cheques are the most expensive form of payment, with unit costs of _3,55. The report is actually a very detailed exposition of the study work that has been done by the ECB, which is important because it is a serious attempt to introduce harmonised methodology and comparable measurements to obtain realistic and useful figures for the social and private costs of cash. In its own executive summary, it says that: The European Central Bank (ECB) carried out a study of the social and private costs of different payment instruments with the participation of 13 national central banks in the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). It shows that the costs to society of