The use of paper instruments-cash and checks-has been declining in the United States, and consumers have been gradually replacing paper with cards and electronic payments. Stavins (2021) examines the evolution of payments from paper to cards and electronic payments, while Shy (2020) shows the...

The market for payments is an important two-sided one, where consumers benefit from increased merchant acceptance of payment cards and vice versa. The dependence between the decisions that are made on each side of the market results in various network externalities that are often discussed but...

During the Great Recession, the collapse of consumption across the U.S. varied greatly but systematically with house-price declines. We find that financial distress among U.S. households amplified the sensitivity of consumption to house-price shocks. We uncover two essential facts: (1) the...

Using a novel dataset composed of nearly 30k randomly selected cardholders from the largest financial institution in Latin America (Itau Unibanco), we analyze the choices of distressed Brazilian clients. Conditional on having two credit cards and defaulting on only one of them, we find that...

This study shows that individuals' habits in grocery shopping are incrementally useful in predicting their credit card payment behaviors and that such incremental predictive power can translate into incremental profits for firms. Guided by prior work, we identify five broad grocery shopping...

We study the relationship between interchange fees and card transactions in a large panel of countries and assess the impact of the Interchange Fee Regulation, introduced in 2015 in the European Union, on card usage. For our purposes, we take advantage of a newly assembled dataset covering...

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) offers creditors a powerful tool for addressing lending disparities for historically underserved groups: Special Purpose Credit Programs (SPCPs). SPCPs provide a targeted means for creditors to meet special social needs and benefit economically...

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...

We investigate bank relationships in a rarely-considered context – consumer and small business credit cards. Using over one million accounts, we find during normal times, consumer relationship customers enjoy relatively favorable credit terms, consistent with the bright side of relationships,...

We use credit card data from the Federal Reserve Board's FR Y-14M reports to study the impact of the COVID-19 shock on the use and availability of consumer credit across borrower types from March through August 2020. We document an initial sharp decrease in credit card transactions and...

This paper argues that thresholds in financial contracts act as implicit nudges in consumers’ decisions. Exploiting a regulatory change to credit card minimum payments in Mexico, we find that a one percentage point change in minimum payments leads to a 0.87 pp change in actual payments, both...

We study how adopting co-branded credit cards affects customers’ behavioral loyalty with the brand in the context of the airline industry. Specifically, we explore three dimensions of loyalty that may be affected: the amount of money spent on the airline, loyalty-points redemption, and...

Very little is known about payment choices in the African context and in developing countries in general. Their unique infrastructures and economic nuances suggest that both the availability of instruments and supporting structures in the payment system are different from the general perception....

Consumer payments in the United States gradually have been shifting away from paper checks for the past several years. Cash use has declined as well, although at a much slower pace. As the number of check payments has decreased, those payments have been replaced with electronic and card...

The consumer goods market is characterized by strong competition. Thus, to bind customers to the company, a higher priority needs to be attributed to customer retention measures. Such measures include the loyalty card, but the use of the physical card is declining. To counteract this decline,...

This paper evaluates the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of the 2020 fiscal stimulus payments using high-frequency, transaction-level data for a sample of low-income cardholders, many of whom are unbanked. Consumers' MPC out of non-stimulus income and their MPC out of tax refunds are...

The main aim of the research was to determine the key factors determining the level of credit risk of individual clients (clients in the form of natural persons, excluding companies) on the example of Polish cooperative banks according to the following features: transaction characteristics,...

Um ihren Fokus auf Nachhaltigkeit zu unterstreichen bieten vereinzelte Banken in Deutschland und der Schweiz ihrer Kundschaft seit kurzem Kreditkarten aus Holz. Wie nehmen die Kunden diese Karten in Bezug auf die Nachhaltigkeit der Karte und der Bank wahr? Auf Basis der...

Using a representative sample of the U.S. adult population, we analyze which payment methods consumers use to pay other consumers (p2p) and how these choices depend on transaction and demographic characteristics. We additionally construct a random matching model of consumers with diverse...

Credit card default payment prediction studies are very important for any financial institution dealing with credit cards. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the performance of machine learning methods on credit card default payment prediction using logistic regression, C4.5 decision tree,...

There is a long, unfortunate history of colleges and universities steering students toward predatory financial products. Across consumer financial markets — from student loans to credit cards — schools have been caught making back-room deals with lenders at borrowers’ expense. The market...

I quantify the impact of Federal Funds Rate (FFR) movements on consumers' welfare via the floating, or variable, rate on their credit cards. I first newly document that 96% of card rates adjust to the FFR within 3 months of a change in the latter. Exploiting these rate changes, I construct a...

I explain the credit card debt puzzle – the co-holding of high-cost debt and low-yield liquid assets – with a household and individual determinant that lower debt repayments. At the household level, co-holding is consistent with intra-household frictions. Couples co-hold 40 percent more than...

How do macroeconomic expectations affect consumer decisions? We examine this question using a natural field experiment with 2,872 credit card customers from a large commercial bank. We conduct a survey to measure consumer expectations about future inflation and the nominal exchange rate and...

A timely reminder on an app or website prompts delinquent credit card debtors with strong credit records to repay but is ineffective for debtors with weak credit records. We study field data from a 2015-16 randomized controlled trial of a broadcast reminder received by 30-days-overdue credit...

This paper uses a dataset from one of the largest credit card issuers in Brazil to investigate the extent of credit constraints for one of the world's largest emerging market economies. In order to deal with the endogeneity problem from an observational dataset, an identification strategy based...

The goal of this paper is to show that household-level financial distress (FD) varies greatly, meaning there is unequal exposure to macroeconomic risk, and that FD can increase macroeconomic vulnerability. To do this, we first establish three facts: (i) regions in the U.S. vary significantly in...

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...

This paper examines digital finance usage in the UK, US, India and Nigeria. Using data from the global financial development indicators, the findings reveal that the UK and US have higher digital finance usage than India and Nigeria. The US has higher credit card usage compared to the UK while...

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical model for consumer behavioral intention by integrating the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theory of perceived risk, which is tested on the intended use of credit cards in Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach - The data...

We build a framework to understand the effects of regulatory interventions in credit markets, such as caps on interest rates and higher compliance costs for lenders. We focus on the credit card market, in which we observe U.S. consumers borrowing at high and very dispersed interest rates,...