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Digital Payments and Cash Demand in the Philippines


This study analyzed the relationship between digital payments and demand for cash using data from the Philippines from late 2019 to 2024. Cash demand was measured using two indicators — bank cash withdrawals from the central bank and currency in circulation to GDP ratio. We also used two measures of digital payments. First is a narrow indicator that measures person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions made through the Philippines’ QR code system. Second is a wider and more encompassing measure that includes, aside from P2P and P2M, more sophisticated and higher-value financial transactions. Using the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag method, we found evidence that (i) overall, digital payments have a negative long-run relationship with total cash demand, (ii) the wider measure of digital payments has a stronger relationship, and (iii) the relationship varies across denominations and between the two measures of cash demand.



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