This paper examines the possible impact on innovation involving payment cards as a result of price caps that lead to the drastic reduction in interchange fees. Such reductions invert the traditional business model for the payments card industry from a merchant-pays model to a consumer-pays...

This study provides a detailed analysis of how the Portuguese payment system operates and how regulatory interventions, especially those involving price controls, would likely affect the interest of the various stakeholders in the system including consumers, merchants, banks, schemes, and...

This essay surveys the economic literature on interchange fees and the debate over whether interchange should be regulated and, if so, how. We consider, first, the operation of unitary payment systems, like American Express, in the context of the recent economic literature on two-sided markets,...

This article is about a type of business that connects distinct groups of customers on a "multi-sided platform." Such businesses have been around for millennia. But their economic importance has increased with the Internet revolution. Many significant web-based businesses such as eBay, Facebook,...