IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2003-202.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pricing Debit Card Payment Services: An IO Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander F. Tieman
  • Wilko Bolt

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical framework for analyzing pricing structures in debit card schemes featuring cardholders, retailers, their respective banks, and a network routing switch. The network routing switch controls the electronic debit card network and is jointly owned by the banks. In setting its prices, it needs to consider getting both consumers and retailers to participate in the market. In this two-sided market for debit cards, we show that the "double-monopolistic" network routing switch may want to supply consumers with cheap debit cards, deriving profits from charging a high retailer fee per transaction. This theoretic result resembles the current practice in the Netherlands where consumers pay no transaction fee, but retailers do. This corner solution carries over when we analyze socially optimal pricing.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander F. Tieman & Wilko Bolt, 2003. "Pricing Debit Card Payment Services: An IO Approach," IMF Working Papers 2003/202, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2003/202
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=16883
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Humphrey, David B & Kim, Moshe & Vale, Bent, 2001. "Realizing the Gains from Electronic Payments: Costs, Pricing, and Payment Choice," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(2), pages 216-234, May.
    2. Rochet, Jean-Charles & Tirole, Jean, 1999. "Cooperation Among Competitors: The Economics of Credit Card Associations," CEPR Discussion Papers 2101, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Gans Joshua S & King Stephen P, 2003. "The Neutrality of Interchange Fees in Payment Systems," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-18, January.
    4. Baxter, William F, 1983. "Bank Interchange of Transactional Paper: Legal and Economic Perspectives," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(3), pages 541-588, October.
    5. Richard Schmalensee, 2002. "Payment Systems and Interchange Fees," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 103-122, June.
    6. David Humphrey & Lawrence Pulley & Jukka Vesala, 2000. "The Check's in the Mail: Why the United States Lags in the Adoption of Cost-Saving Electronic Payments," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 17(1), pages 17-39, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wilko Bolt & David B. Humphrey, 2005. "Public Good Aspects of TARGET: Natural Monopoly, Scale Economies, and Cost Allocation," DNB Working Papers 036, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    2. Wilko Bolt & Alexander F Tieman, 2005. "Skewed Pricing in Two-Sided Markets: An IO approach," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2005 75, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    3. Bolt Wilko & Tieman Alexander F., 2006. "Social Welfare and Cost Recovery in Two-Sided Markets," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, March.
    4. Bolt, Wilko & Tieman, Alexander F., 2008. "Heavily skewed pricing in two-sided markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 1250-1255, September.
    5. Snellman, Heli, 2006. "Automated teller machine network market structure and cash usage," Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, number 2006_038.
    6. Bolt, Wilko & Humphrey, David, 2005. "Public good issues in TARGET: natural monopoly, scale economies, network effects and cost allocation," Working Paper Series 505, European Central Bank.
    7. repec:zbw:bofism:2006_038 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Hayashi Fumiko, 2006. "A Puzzle of Card Payment Pricing: Why Are Merchants Still Accepting Card Payments?," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-31, March.
    9. Hans Brits & Carlo Winder, 2005. "Payments are no free lunch," DNB Occasional Studies 302, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    10. Guibourg, Gabriela & Segendorff, Bjorn, 2007. "A note on the price- and cost structure of retail payment services in the Swedish banking sector 2002," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 2817-2827, September.
    11. Bergman, Mats A., 2005. "A Welfare Ranking of Two-Sided Market Regimes," Working Paper Series 185, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden), revised 01 Sep 2005.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wilko Bolt & Sujit Chakravorti, 2010. "Digitization of Retail Payment," DNB Working Papers 270, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    2. Robert M. Hunt, 2003. "Antitrust issues in payment card networks: can they do that? should we let them?," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Q2, pages 14-23.
    3. Julian Wright, 2004. "The Determinants of Optimal Interchange Fees in Payment Systems," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 1-26, March.
    4. Scholnick, Barry & Massoud, Nadia & Saunders, Anthony & Carbo-Valverde, Santiago & Rodríguez-Fernández, Francisco, 2008. "The economics of credit cards, debit cards and ATMs: A survey and some new evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1468-1483, August.
    5. ?zlem Bedre-Defolie & Emilio Calvano, 2013. "Pricing Payment Cards," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 206-231, August.
    6. Kari Kemppainen, 2004. "Competition and regulation in European retail payment systems," Microeconomics 0404008, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Kemppainen, Kari, 2003. "Competition and regulation in European retail payment systems," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 16/2003, Bank of Finland.
    8. Wang, Zhu, 2010. "Market structure and payment card pricing: What drives the interchange?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 86-98, January.
    9. Ron Borzekowski & Elizabeth K. Kiser & Mark D. Manuszak & Robin A. Prager, 2009. "Interchange fees and payment card networks: economics, industry developments, and policy issues," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2009-23, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    10. Fumiko Hayashi, 2008. "The economics of payment card fee structure: what is the optimal balance between merchant fee and payment card rewards?," Research Working Paper RWP 08-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    11. Graeme Guthrie & Julian Wright, 2007. "Competing Payment Schemes," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 37-67, March.
    12. Julian Wright, 2012. "Why payment card fees are biased against retailers," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(4), pages 761-780, December.
    13. Santiago Carbó-Valverde & Sujit Chakravorti & Francisco Rodríguez-Fernández, 2009. "Regulating two-sided markets: an empirical investigation," Working Paper Series WP-09-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    14. Stuart E. Weiner & Julian Wright, 2005. "Interchange fees in various countries : developments and determinants," Proceedings – Payments System Research Conferences, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue May, pages 5-49.
    15. Marc Bourreau & Marianne Verdier, 2019. "Interchange Fees and Innovation in Payment Systems," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 54(1), pages 129-158, February.
    16. Fumiko Hayashi, 2008. "The economics of payment card fee structure: policy considerations of payment card rewards," Research Working Paper RWP 08-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    17. Zhu Wang, 2013. "Demand externalitites and price cap regulation: Learning from a two-sided market," Working Paper 13-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    18. Hongru Tan, 2020. "The regulation of merchant fees in credit card markets," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 258-276, June.
    19. Rochet Jean-Charles, 2003. "The Theory of Interchange Fees: A Synthesis of Recent Contributions," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(2), pages 1-28, June.
    20. Tan, Hongru & Chen, Xuezheng, 2024. "The no surcharge rule and its welfare implication," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA), pages 1369-1384.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2003/202. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.