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Journal Article
Cash or Debit Cards? Payment Acceptance Costs for Merchants
Fumiko Hayashi examines which of two payment methods—cash or debit cards—is more costly for merchants to accept in person in six countries: the United States, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. She finds that debit cards have been more costly for merchants to accept than cash in the United States in recent years, while cash has become more costly to accept than debit cards in the other five countries. Two factors explain this difference. First, although interchange fees are just one component of merchants’ debit card acceptance costs, the fees alone are higher than ...