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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 ...
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 ...
Working Paper
Interchange fees in various countries: developments and determinants
Interchange fees and related issues in credit and debit card markets have been the focus of considerable attention in recent years. The academic community has begun to address the economics of these markets. Public officials have begun to address the policy implications of developments in these markets. Meanwhile, these markets continue to experience dynamic change as credit, and especially debit, transactions account for an ever-growing share of overall payments. This paper provides an overview of interchange fee developments and issues in a number of countries. It also presents a ...
Working Paper
Technology adoption and consumer payments : evidence from survey data
Consumers pay for hundreds of goods and services each year, but across households and across goods, consumers do not choose to pay the same way. This paper posits that these differences depend in part on consumers' propensity to adopt new technologies, and depend in part on the nature of the transaction. In order to test these hypotheses, this paper offers comparisons of payment instrument use at the point of sale and for bill payment from a sample of consumers surveyed in 2001, drawn primarily from users of the Internet. The results indicate that consumers who use technology or computers are ...
Working Paper
Internet banking: an exploration in technology diffusion and impact
This paper studies endogenous diffusion and impact of a cost-saving technological innovation -- Internet Banking. When the innovation is initially introduced, large banks have an advantage to adopt it first and enjoy further growth of size. Over time, as the innovation diffuses into smaller banks, the aggregate bank size distribution increases stochastically towards a new steady state. Applying the theory to a panel study of Internet Banking diffusion across 50 US states, we examine the technological, economic and institutional factors governing the process. The empirical findings allow us to ...
Working Paper
Financial innovation, strategic real options and endogenous competition : theory and an application to Internet banking
Innovations in financial services continuously influence the scope of financial intermediation and the nature of competition between intermediaries. This paper examines the optimal exercise of strategic real options to invest in such an innovation, Internet banking technology, within a two-stage game, parameterized by the distribution of bank size and uncertainty over the profitability of investment, and empirically tests the results on a novel data set. Unlike traditional options, in which the distribution of the future value of the underlying asset is exogenous and the timing of exercise ...
Working Paper
Market structure and credit card pricing: what drives the interchange?
This paper presents a model for the credit card industry, where oligopolistic card networks price their products in a complex marketplace with competing payment instruments, rational consumers/merchants, and competitive card issuers/acquirers. The analysis suggests that card networks demand higher interchange fees to maximize card issuers' profits as card payments become more efficient. At equilibrium, consumer rewards and card transaction volume also increase, while consumer surplus and merchant profits may not. The model provides a unified framework to evaluate credit card industry ...
Working Paper
Learning, diffusion and the industry life cycle
An industry typically experiences initial mass entry and later shakeout of producers over its life cycle. It can be explained as a competitive equilibrium outcome driven by the dynamic interaction between technology progress and demand diffusion. When a new product is introduced, high-income consumers tend to adopt it first. Technology then improves with cumulative output and demand growth generates S-shaped diffusion as the product penetrates lower-income groups. Eventually fewer new adopters are available and the number of firms starts to decline. It is shown that faster technological ...
Working Paper
Nonbanks in the payments system
Nonbanks have always been a key component of the nation's payments system. In recent years, however, nonbanks have become even more prominent. This heightened visibility raises several questions. In which payments activities are nonbanks engaged? What roles do nonbanks play in specific payments types? What types of risk are potentially associated with nonbank participation? This paper begins to address these questions. Preliminary findings include: (1) Nonbanks are involved in a myriad of activities and roles, both in traditional and emerging payments types; (2) Nonbank business relationships ...
Working Paper
Microfoundations of two-sided markets: the payment card example
This paper provides a theory of two-sided market dynamics with arguably better microfoundations. These alternative microfoundations focus on observable heterogeneities of both sides of the market in a competitive framework. The theory is rich in empirical predictions and is less dependent on a particular form of imperfect competition than other approaches. Our findings in the payment card example point to adoption costs and the distribution of consumer incomes and firm sizes as the key determinants of the shares of costs borne by each side. This result provides clear implications for industry ...