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Working Paper
Merchant steering of consumer payment choice: evidence from a 2012 Diary survey
This paper seeks to discover whether U.S. merchants are using their recently granted freedom to offer price discounts and other incentives to steer customers to pay with methods that are less costly to merchants. Using evidence of merchant steering based on the 2012 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, we find that only a very small fraction of transactions received a cash or debit card discount, and even fewer were subjected to a credit card surcharge. Transactions at gasoline stations were more likely to receive either cash discounts or credit card surcharges than transactions in other ...
Working Paper
Does getting a mortgage affect credit card use?
Buying a house changes a household?s balance sheet by simultaneously reducing liquidity and introducing mortgage payments, which may leave the household more exposed to other shocks. We find that this change affects credit card use in two ways: A debt effect increases credit card spending, while a credit effect leads to higher credit limits. In the short run, a new mortgage acquisition has a robust and statistically significant positive effect on credit card utilization ? the fraction of a consumer?s credit card limit that is used ? of approximately 11 percentage points. Before the 2008 ...
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The 2017 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice
This paper describes key results from the 2017 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC), the fourth in a series of diary surveys that measure payment behavior through the daily recording of U.S. consumers' spending. The DCPC is the only diary survey of U.S. consumer payments available free to the public. In October 2017, consumers paid mostly with cash (30.3 percent of payments), debit cards (26.2 percent), and credit cards (21.0 percent). These instruments accounted for three-quarters of the number of payments, but only about 40 percent of the total value of payments, because they tend to be ...
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How do consumers make their payment choices?
Payment transformation has generated a shift from paper to cards and electronic payments in the United States, but there is also a large degree of heterogeneity among consumers in how they pay. We present factors affecting consumer payment behavior, show data on how consumers pay in the United States, and summarize existing literature on consumer payment choice. On the supply side, technology, regulation, and cost affect payment behavior. On the demand side, consumer demographics and income, consumer preferences, and consumer assessments of payment method attributes have all been found ...
Working Paper
Why are (some) consumers (finally) writing fewer checks?: the role of payment characteristics
Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. payment system has been undergoing a transformation featuring a significant decline in the use of paper checks that has been quite uneven across consumers and not well understood. This paper estimates econometric models of consumers? adoption (extensive margin) and use (intensive margin) of checks plus six other common U.S. payment instruments, using a comprehensive new data source on consumer payment choice. We find that payment characteristics are the most important determinants of payment instrument use. Plausible changes in the relative convenience and cost ...
Working Paper
Estimating demand elasticities in a differentiated product industry: the personal computer market
Supply and demand functions are typically estimated using uniform prices and quantities across products, but where products are heterogeneous, it is important to consider quality differences explicitly. This paper demonstrates a new approach to doing this by employing hedonic coefficients to estimate price elasticities for differentiated products in the market for personal computers. Differences among products are modeled as distances in a linear quality space derived from a multi-dimensional attribute space. Heterogeneous quality allows for the estimation of varying demand elasticities among ...
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How do speed and security influence consumers' payment behavior?
The Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) strategic plan for 2012-2016 named improvements in the end-to-end speed and security of the payment system as two of its policy initiatives. End-to-end in this context means that for the first time end-users are explicitly included. Earlier versions of the strategy plan were circulated for public comment, and the feedback received by FRFS specifically identified a need for further research. This brief draws upon new data from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice and employs econometric modeling and simulation to complement FRFS-commissioned ...
Working Paper
Network externalities and technology adoption: lessons from electronic payments
We seek to analyze the extent and sources of network externalities for the automated clearinghouse (ACH) electronic payments system using a quarterly panel data set on individual bank adoption and usage of ACH. We provide three methods to identify network externalities using this panel data. The first method identifies network externalities from the clustering of ACH adoption. The second method identifies them by examining whether banks in areas with higher market concentration or larger competitors are more likely to adopt ACH. The third method identifies them by examining whether the ACH ...
Discussion Paper
Do bank mergers affect Federal Reserve check volume?
The recent decline in the Federal Reserve?s check volumes has received a lot of attention. Although switching to electronic payments methods and electronic check-processing has been credited for much of that decline, some of it could be caused by changes following bank mergers involving Federal Reserve customer banks. This paper evaluates the effect of bank mergers on Federal Reserve check-processing volumes. ; Using inflow-outflow and regression methods, we find that mergers between two or more Reserve Bank customers have resulted in volume losses, especially during the first quarter ...