With electronic payment means advancing, various types of high frequency data are produced through the payment and settlement systems. However, there are not many studies that can be utilized in connection with real economic indicators. This paper summarizes the status of payment and settlement statistics compilation and systematically examines the degree of useful information the payment and settlement statistics provide for judging actual economic developments. 

  First, according to an analysis on cyclical components, the amount of cash withdrawn from CDs and the scale of total payment card usage show a high degree of co-movement with retail sales, the amount of electronic bonds issued and the amount of CMS funds transfer, with facilities investment, the amount of money transferred through electronic financial networks, the frequency of B2C transactions, and all-industry production. In addition, according to the analysis in terms of the time domain, payment and settlement statistics have shown a higher corelation with real economic indicators since the Global Financial Crisis. In terms of the frequency domain, more than 12 months into the cycle there is a high degree of mutual correlation.

  In addition, through distributed lag model estimation and moving average method analysis, it has been confirmed that payment and settlement statistics can be used for short-term forecasts of real economic indicators or for the judgment of business conditions. The appropriateness of real economic indicators such as retail sales increases substantially when estimated with autoregressive lagged variables and payment and settlement statistics, compared with when analyzed with the use of autoregressive lagged variables only. Given that payment and settlement statistics are compiled in real time through computer systems, significant leading information on real economic indicators not yet released or finalized would seem to be available without any additional costs. Moreover, payment and settlement statistics are found to have a similar cycle to those of real economic indicators. In this regard, payment and settlement statistics can be used as auxiliary indicators that are differentiated from current regular economic indicators.

  In this way, since payment and settlement statistics are considered useful as well as real economic indicators in judging domestic business conditions, the extent to which they are utilized needs to be enlarged further through the development of various types of composite indexes, filtering analysis to identify business phases and research in connection with regional real economic indicators.