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Cash or Debit Cards? Payment Acceptance Costs for Merchants

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  • Fumiko Hayashi

Abstract

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 the total cost of accepting cash in the United States. Second, the number of cash transactions has declined at a much slower pace in the United States than in other countries, keeping the cost of accepting cash from rising.

Suggested Citation

  • Fumiko Hayashi, 2021. "Cash or Debit Cards? Payment Acceptance Costs for Merchants," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 106(no.3), pages 5-21, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedker:93109
    DOI: 10.18651/ER/v106n3Hayashi
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anneke Kosse & Heng Chen & Marie-Hélène Felt & Valéry Dongmo Jiongo & Kerry Nield & Angelika Welte, 2017. "The Costs of Point-of-Sale Payments in Canada," Discussion Papers 17-4, Bank of Canada.
    2. Nicole Jonker, 2013. "Social costs of POS payments in the Netherlands 2002-2012: Efficiency gains from increased debit card usage," DNB Occasional Studies 1102, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Payments; Debit Cards; Interchange Fees;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System

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