In 2010, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against the credit card networks American Express, MasterCard, and Visa for alleged antitrust violations. We evaluate the extent to which the recently proposed settlement between the DOJ and Visa and MasterCard (henceforth, Proposed...

Merchant fees and reward programs generate an implicit monetary transfer to credit card users from non-card (or cash) users because merchants generally do not set differential prices for card users to recoup the costs of fees and rewards. On average, each cash-using household pays $149 to...

This paper summarizes and outlines some interesting issues that arose during a recent workshop on Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's Emerging Payments Research Group (EPRG) on July 25, 2008. Topics addressed are the consumer adoption of new...

This paper summarizes the proceedings of the second Consumer Behavior and Payment Choice conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on July 2527, 2006. These conferences are unique in featuring the collaboration of two groups of payments experts the private-sector payments industry...

The paper investigates the reasons why person-to-person electronic funds transfers are still not very common in the United States compared with practices in many other countries. The paper also describes recent enhancements to online and mobile banking that provide account holders with low-cost...

We measure consumers' use of cash by harmonizing payment diary surveys from seven countries. The seven diary surveys were conducted in 2009 (Canada), 2010 (Australia), 2011 (Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands), and 2012 (the United States). Our paper finds cross-country differences –...

The way people pay for goods and services is changing dramatically, but little data and research on consumer behavior and payment choice are publicly available. This paper describes the results of a survey of payment behavior and attitudes taken by Federal Reserve employees in 2004. Major...

This paper presents results of the 2009 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC), along with revised 2008 SCPC data. In 2009, the average U.S. consumer held 5.0 of the nine payment instruments available, including cash, and used 3.8 of them during a typical month. Between the 2008 and 2009...

The recent decline in the Federal Reserve's check volumes has received a lot of attention. Although switching to electronic payments methods and electronic checkprocessing has been credited for much of that decline, some of it could be caused by changes following bank mergers involving Federal...

Although mobile payments are increasingly used in some countries, they have not been adopted widely in the United States so far, despite their potential to add value for consumers and streamline the payments system. After describing a few countries' experiences, we analyze the prospects for the...