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Working Paper
Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in the United States and Canada
Using data from the United States and Canada, we quantify consumers’ net pecuniary cost of using cash, credit cards, and debit cards for purchases across income cohorts. The net cost includes fees paid to financial institutions, rewards received from credit or debit card issuers, and the higher retail prices passed on to consumers to cover merchants’ payment processing costs. Even though credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept compared with other payment methods, merchants typically do not differentiate prices at checkout but instead pass through their costs to all ...
Working Paper
Pricing and welfare implications of payment card network competition
This paper examines how competition among payment card networks three-party scheme networks and four-party scheme networks affects pricing as well as the welfare of various parties. A competing network has an incentive to provide rewards to its card users. By providing more generous rewards than its rival networks, the network can increase its own card transactions because multihoming cardholders who hold multiple networks cards choose to use its card instead of using its rivals. Although a monopoly network does not have such an incentive, in a monopoly four-party scheme network, competition ...
Briefing
New Data on Card-Present and Card-Not-Present Fraud Rates in the United States
Recently updated data show that the card-present fraud rate of non-prepaid debit cards increased for transactions on single-message networks from 2021 to 2023 but decreased for dual-message networks—reversing a previous trend. The card-not-present fraud rate for both types of networks continued its upward trend. Cardholders’ fraud loss rates also continued to increase for both card-present and card-not-present transactions on both types of networks.
Report
Faster payments: market structure and policy considerations
The U.S. payments industry is in the process of developing ubiquitous, safe, faster electronic solutions for making a broad variety of business and personal payments. How this market for faster payments will evolve will be shaped by a range of economic forces, such as economies of scale and scope, network effects, switching costs, and product differentiation. Emerging technologies could alter these forces and lead to new organizational arrangements or market structures that are different from those in legacy payment markets to date. In light of this uncertainty, this paper examines three ...
Working Paper
Faster payments in the United States: how can private sector systems achieve public policy goals?
Consumers and businesses are increasingly expecting faster payments. While many countries have already developed or are in process of developing faster payments, the availability of these payments is fragmented in the United States. The recently released paper by the Federal Reserve encourages private sector participants to provide faster payment services. However, private-sector faster payments systems will face significant challenges in achieving public policy goals of ubiquity, safety, and efficiency unless system governance represents broad public interests. One way to better align ...
Journal Article
Who Are the Unbanked? Characteristics Beyond Income
As the U.S. economy recovered from the Great Recession, more households entered the banking system. Still, 9 million households were unbanked in 2015. Understanding the characteristics of these households is critical in designing effective policies for financial inclusion. Policymakers often consider low income to be the defining characteristic of the unbanked. However, this broad characterization may mask large differences in banking status within low-income groups. {{p}} Fumiko Hayashi and Sabrina Minhas examine which household characteristics beyond income are associated with households? ...
Working Paper
Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in the United States and Canada
Using data from the United States and Canada, we quantify consumers’ net pecuniary cost of using cash, credit cards, and debit cards for purchases across income cohorts. The net cost includes fees paid to financial institutions, rewards received from credit or debit card issuers, and the merchant cost of accepting payments that is passed on to consumers as higher retail prices. Even though credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept compared with other payment methods, merchants typically do not differentiate prices at checkout, but instead pass through their costs to all ...
Briefing
Market Structure of Core Banking Services Providers
Three core providers dominate the market for core banking systems for depository institutions (DIs). These providers also have a large presence in vertically related markets, such as card network services; payment processing services for DIs, merchants, or governments; and banking-as-a-service. This market structure may make it difficult for DIs to switch their core providers, affecting their ability to offer new services and stay competitive.
Working Paper
Network competition and merchant discount fees
Pricing in two-sided markets has not been fully understood yet. Especially, investigations of how competition in these markets affects the price structure or levels are still underway. This paper takes the payment card industry as an example of two-sided markets and examines whether two networks? competition lowers one of the prices in the industry, merchant discount fees, and if it does, how much it lowers equilibrium merchant fees compared with the fee set by a monopoly network. If some cardholders hold only one card and the other cardholders hold two different cards, whether network ...
Journal Article
Financial Constraints Among Buy Now, Pay Later Users
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) services have become increasingly popular in the United States over the past decade, especially among both younger and financially vulnerable consumers. Although BNPL services may help some consumers manage financial constraints by breaking down purchases into smaller installments and providing access to interest-free credit, the smaller, interest-free installments may also lead some consumers to perceive purchases as more affordable than they really are, increasing the risk of overspending, debt accumulation, and even default.Fumiko Hayashi and Aditi Routh examine ...