Nowcasting macroeconomic variables using payments data

Payments Canada has released its latest discussion paper, Nowcasting macroeconomic variables using payments data

The recent COVID-19 pandemic caused severe economic disruptions in Canada and around the world. During financially unstable times, policymakers and decision makers need to be able to make short-term economic projections in order to implement effective monetary and economic policies. However, traditional methods of economic measurement like gross domestic product (GDP) and the consumer price index (CPI) are typically released with an eight and two week delay, respectively. This paper aims to determine whether payments data from Lynx and the Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS) can be used to forecast macroeconomic indicators more quickly.