Lydian Payments Journal - PYMNTS.com

Introducing the Lydian Payments Journal
By David S. Evans †
The Lydian Payments Journal publishes articles from thought leaders on one of the most important
industries in the world—an industry that makes trade, the source of almost all economic prosperity,
possible. That will seem like an outrageous claim to some people. Making and receiving payments is so
routine and trivial that most take it for granted. But flash back three millennia to the days when a lot of
effort went into buying a chicken. Our ancestors had to figure out what they could offer the chicken owner
in trade. Maybe a shirt or a clay pot, or as trading became more sophisticated a slug of some precious metal.
The Kingdom of Lydia, a region that is now part of eastern Turkey, started the payments industry at least in
their part of the world in around 600 BC. The government stamped out a coin with a particular metal
content and therefore value. It became a popular method of payment and soon created imitators. More
innovations followed. All these innovations greased the way for trade.
In doing so the payments industry permitted the creation of vast wealth for society. Besides simply making
it easier for people to exchange value it encouraged economic specialization and trade over ever expanding
regions. The latest frontiers are e‐commerce and mobile phones. Trading in some of the poorest parts of
the world is now undergoing a revolution as a result of payments innovations made possible by wireless
communications.
Today, a vast industry supports payments. It includes governments that make cash; networks that clear
and settle transactions; banks that provide their customers with several payments devices; companies that
issue credit cards; entities that help merchants take and collect payments in a variety of ways;
manufacturers of point‐of‐sale terminals, ATM machines, and other hardware; software providers who sell
applications that make many things work; and many more.
† David S. Evans is the author of Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing and has
been a business advisor to many payment companies around the world. David is the founder of Market
Platform Dynamics, a boutique consulting firm that helps businesses leverage economics and quantitative
methods for growth and profit. David teaches part time at the University of Chicago where he is Lecturer and
at the University College London where he is Visiting Professor and Executive Director of the Jevons Institute
for Competition Law and Economics. David has a Ph.D. and undergraduate degree in economics from the
University of Chicago. He also serves on the boards of several high­technology companies and is a longtime
advisor to some of the largest platform­based companies in the world.
© 2009. Copying, reprinting, or distributing this article is forbidden by anyone other than the publisher or author. 1