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Why don’t most merchants use price discounts to steer consumer payment choice?

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Listed:
  • Tamas Briglevics
  • Oz Shy

Abstract

Recent legislation and court settlements in the United States allow merchants to use price discounts to steer customers to pay with means of payment that are less costly to merchants. This paper suggests one method of calculating merchants? change in profit associated with giving price discounts to buyers who pay with debit cards and cash. We use data from the pilot of the Boston Fed?s Diary of Consumer Payment Choice to compute rough estimates of the expected net cost reduction by merchant type that may result from debit card and cash price discounts. We find that steering consumers to debit and cash via price discounts reduces some merchants? card costs. However, this cost reduction may be insufficient to offset the cost increase of administering price menus that vary by payment instrument. In addition, rewards buyers receive on credit card transactions may exceed the price discounts that merchants can provide. These factors may explain why steering via price discounts is not widely observed.

Suggested Citation

  • Tamas Briglevics & Oz Shy, 2012. "Why don’t most merchants use price discounts to steer consumer payment choice?," Public Policy Discussion Paper 12-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbpp:12-9
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. How monetary systems cope with a multitude of dollars
      by JP Koning in Moneyness on 2015-06-25 19:34:00

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    Cited by:

    1. John Bagnall & David Bounie & Kim P. Huynh & Anneke Kosse & Tobias Schmidt & Scott Schuh, 2016. "Consumer Cash Usage: A Cross-Country Comparison with Payment Diary Survey Data," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(4), pages 1-61, December.
    2. Stavins, Joanna & Shy, Oz, 2015. "Merchant steering of consumer payment choice: Evidence from a 2012 diary survey," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 1-9.
    3. Joanna Stavins & Huijia Wu, 2017. "Payment discounts and surcharges: the role of consumer preferences," Working Papers 17-4, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    4. Daniel Flores & Vitaliy Kalashnikov, 2017. "Parking Discounts: Price Discrimination with Different Marginal Costs," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 50(1), pages 91-103, February.
    5. Marie-Hélène Felt & Fumiko Hayashi & Joanna Stavins & Angelika Welte, 2020. "Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in the United States and Canada," Research Working Paper RWP 20-18, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    6. Marie-Hélène Felt & Fumiko Hayashi & Joanna Stavins & Angelika Welte, 2021. "Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in Canada and the United States," Staff Working Papers 21-8, Bank of Canada.
    7. Stavins, Joanna, 2018. "Consumer preferences for payment methods: Role of discounts and surcharges," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 35-53.
    8. Solomon H. Tarlin, 2021. "The Future of Cash," Community Affairs Discussion Paper 21-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    9. Oz Shy, 2014. "Measuring Some Effects Of The 2011 Debit Card Interchange Fee Reform," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 32(4), pages 769-783, October.
    10. Felt, Marie-Hélène & Hayashi, Fumiko & Stavins, Joanna & Welte, Angelika, 2023. "Regressive effects of payment card pricing and merchant cost pass-through in the United States and Canada," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    11. Takanori ADACHI & Mark J. TREMBLAY, 2022. "Do No-Surcharge Rules Increase Effective Retail Prices?," Discussion papers e-22-003, Graduate School of Economics , Kyoto University.
    12. Jing Jian Xiao & Chunsheng Tao, 2020. "Consumer finance/household finance: the definition and scope," China Finance Review International, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 11(1), pages 1-25, June.
    13. Arango, Carlos & Huynh, Kim P. & Sabetti, Leonard, 2015. "Consumer payment choice: Merchant card acceptance versus pricing incentives," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 130-141.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Payment systems; Credit cards; Debit cards; Cash transactions;
    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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