The paper offers a roadmap to the current economic thinking concerning interchange fees. After describing the fundamental externalities inherent in payment systems and analysing merchant resistance to interchange fee increases and the associations' determination of this fee, it derives the...

The contributions presented in this volume are a good illustration of the incredible richness and depth of the challenges posed by multi-sided industries.

We analyze platforms in two-sided markets with network externalities, using the specific context of a payment card association. We study the cooperative determination of the interchange fee by member banks. The interchange fee is the ``access charge'' paid by the merchants' banks (the acquirers)...

The paper analyzes two controversial features of the credit card industry. The first is the cooperative determination of the interchange fee by member banks in credit card associations (Visa and MasterCard). The interchange fee is the ``access charge'' paid by the merchants' banks, the...

Payment card associations offer both debit and credit cards and, until recently, engaged in a tie-in on the merchant side through the so-called honour-all-cards (HAC) rule. The HAC rule came under attack on the grounds that the credit and debit card markets are separate markets and that the...

Antitrust authorities often argue that merchants cannot reasonably turn down payment cards and therefore are forced to accept unacceptably high merchant discounts. The paper attempts to shed light on this must-take cards view from two angles. First, the paper gives some operational content to...