ensure that the swiss payments ecosystem is in a position to absorb innovations and respond to user demands, while maintaining its trademark efficiency and safety, the snb has engaged in a dialogue with stakeholders. while recognising that the ultimate solutions will need to come from the private sector, the snb can help shape a common ‘ swiss payments vision ’ that will help the various stakeholders to better position themselves vis - a - vis the new technologies in the swiss payments ecosystem. the covid - 19 pandemic seems to have accelerated the transformation of the payments landscape for users and providers alike. but payments is only one area faced with digital disruption. what about other areas – for instance, areas that stand to be affected by big data and automation? big data and automation the trend towards a digital economy is also generating huge amounts of new data. nowadays, more data are created every day than all of humanity created during the entire 20th century. this flood of information enables new ways of monitoring and analysing the economy. a march 2021 survey shows that central banks ’ interest in big data and machine learning has increased markedly over the last few years. 8 the snb is no exception. the covid - 19 pandemic brought the need to exploit non - standard data into sharp focus. in normal times, official economic indicators and surveys are sufficient to monitor economic developments. but such standard data are only available at lower frequency and with a certain time delay. with events unfolding rapidly during the first wave of the covid19 crisis, the need for non - standard, real - time data that are available at higher frequency became more pressing than ever before. to monitor economic activity, daily mobility and daily card transaction data became particularly useful as concurrent economic indicators. during the first lockdown in spring sebastian doerr, leonardo gambacorta and jose maria serena garralda ( 2021 ), ‘ big data and machine learning in central banking ’, bis working papers, no. 930, march 2021. page 7 / 10 2020, card payments data showed the sharp drop in economic activity in real time. 9 while online payments in retail trade – represented by the red bars in chart 7 – increased, stationary card payments fell by more than 20 % in march and april compared to the previous year, as can be seen from the blue bars. such data also allow a sectoral and regional breakdown. we could thus observe the pronounced payment shifts that took place from urban to suburban and rural areas, and across cantons.

for companies. to be effective, financial support had to be fast and well targeted. to ensure that affected businesses could access covid - 19 loans quickly and at favourable conditions, the federal government, commercial banks, the swiss financial market supervisory authority ( finma ) and the snb engaged in unprecedented collaboration. the government guaranteed the loans ; 2 the banks used their existing client relationships to process applications and disburse the funds ; and the snb set up the covid - 19 refinancing facility ( crf ) – a new refinancing tool designed to complement the covid - 19 loan programme. this package of measures enabled firms to receive a government - guaranteed bank loan within one business day at the attractive rate of 0 % and with a minimum of bureaucracy, and the banks could refinance their loans at the snb policy rate of – 0. 75 %. 3 in addition to the crf, the snb took other measures to facilitate lending. at the recommendation of the snb, the federal council deactivated the countercyclical capital buffer. doing so made it easier for banks to reallocate capital to where it was most needed. the snb also raised the exemption threshold on the sight deposits that commercial banks hold at the central bank. since negative interest is charged only on the portion of the sight deposit account balance that exceeds the exemption threshold, this measure helped substantively lower the interest burden for the banking sector as a whole. 4 overall, the crf greatly facilitated the disbursement of covid - 19 loans to firms. participation was sizeable : 20 % of all swiss firms participated in the programme, with total loan volume amounting to 2. 4 % of gdp. the typical covid - 19 loan was small – around two - thirds of the loans had a limit of less than chf 80, 000. analysis also suggests that the loan programme was well targeted. participation in the loan programme is correlated with the exposure of firms to lockdown restrictions and with the geographical distribution of confirmed covid - 19 cases. 5 and, crucially, the loans reached younger and smaller firms, which are generally less likely to obtain outside financing during a crisis and are therefore more vulnerable. as you can see from chart 6, almost 75 % of all covid - 19 loans were taken out by firms with fewer than five employees. because banks played an important role in disbursing covid - 19 loans, it was important that they