IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rmn/wpaper/201408.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do the Poor Pay for Card Rewards of the Rich?

Author

Listed:
  • Malte Krüger

Abstract

Card payment systems are sometimes accused of taking from the poor and giving to the rich. The argument is as follows: High card fees are leading to higher retail prices for both, card users and cash users. However, high income card holders are receiving rewards when purchasing by card. The result may be a net transfer of, mostly low-income, cash users to, mostly high-income, card users. In this article a model with monopolist product differentiation is used to show that rich card holders may actually be paying for their card rewards themselves. In this case, there is perverse distribution effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Malte Krüger, 2014. "Do the Poor Pay for Card Rewards of the Rich?," ROME Working Papers 201408, ROME Network.
    • Handle: RePEc:rmn:wpaper:201408
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rome-net.org/RePEc/rmn/wpaper/rome-wp-2014-08.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wright, Julian, 2003. "Optimal card payment systems," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 587-612, August.
    2. Wright Julian, 2010. "Why Do Merchants Accept Payment Cards?," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(3), pages 1-8, August.
    3. Schwartz Marius & Vincent Daniel R., 2006. "The No Surcharge Rule and Card User Rebates: Vertical Control by a Payment Network," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-31, March.
    4. Acharyya, Rajat, 1998. "Monopoly and product quality: Separating or pooling menu?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 187-194, November.
    5. Jean‐Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2011. "Must‐Take Cards: Merchant Discounts And Avoided Costs," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 462-495, June.
    6. Mussa, Michael & Rosen, Sherwin, 1978. "Monopoly and product quality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 301-317, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Reisinger, Markus & Zenger, Hans, 2019. "Interchange fee regulation and service investments," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 40-77.
    2. Julian Wright, 2012. "Why payment card fees are biased against retailers," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(4), pages 761-780, December.
    3. Wang, Zhu, 2016. "Price cap regulation in a two-sided market: Intended and unintended consequences," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 28-37.
    4. Frans Saxén, 2014. "The No Surcharge Rule and Merchant Competition," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 39-66, March.
    5. Bourguignon, Hélène & Gomes, Renato & Tirole, Jean, 2019. "Shrouded transaction costs: must-take cards, discounts and surcharges," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 99-144.
    6. Ding, Rong, 2014. "Merchant internalization revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 347-349.
    7. 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.
    8. Lahmandi-Ayed, Rim, 2010. "Spatial differentiation, divisible consumption and the pro-competitive effect of income," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 71-85, January.
    9. Aurazo Jose & Vasquez Jose, 2019. "Merchant Card Acceptance: An Extension of the Tourist Test for Developing Countries," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 18(2), pages 109-139, June.
    10. 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.
    11. Jean‐Marc Bonnisseau & Rim Lahmandi‐Ayed, 2007. "Vertical differentiation with non‐uniform consumers' distribution," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 3(3), pages 179-190, September.
    12. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2008:i:34:p:1-10 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Acharyya, Rajat, 2005. "Quality discrimination among income constrained consumers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 245-251, February.
    14. 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.
    15. Swapnendu Bandyopadhyay & Rajat Acharyya, 2004. "Process and Product Innovation: Complementarity in a Vertically Differentiated Monopoly with Discrete Consumer Types," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 55(2), pages 175-200, June.
    16. Marius Schwartz & Daniel R. Vincent, 2011. "Platform Competition With User Rebates Under No Surcharge Rules," Working Papers gueconwpa~17-17-07, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
    17. 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.
    18. Emanuele Bacchiega & Olivier Bonroy & Emmanuel Petrakis, 2018. "Contract contingency in vertically related markets," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(4), pages 772-791, October.
    19. O. Tarola & C. Vergari, 2012. "A note on acquisition of complements in a vertically differentiated market," Working Papers wp832, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    20. Gabszewicz, Jean J. & Wauthy, Xavier Y., 2002. "Quality underprovision by a monopolist when quality is not costly," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 65-72, September.
    21. Oz Shy, 2011. "A Short Survey of Network Economics," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 38(2), pages 119-149, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Two-sided markets; card rewards; cross-subsidy; pricing strategies;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
    • G29 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:rmn:wpaper:201408. 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: Albrecht F. Michler (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.rome-net.org .

    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.