While the 2007-2010 financial crisis has hit a variety of countries asymmetrically, the case of Spain is particularly illustrative: this country experienced a pronounced housing bubble partly funded via spectacular developments in its securitization markets leading to looser credit standards and...

We study the effect of government encouraged or mandated interchange fee ceilings on consumer and merchant adoption and usage of payment cards in an economy where card acceptance is far from complete. We believe that we are the first to use bank-level data to study the impact of interchange fee...

Card issuers have mainly relied on rewards programs as their main strategic driver to increase electronic payments. However, there is scarce evidence on the effectiveness of rewards programs. This paper offers novel evidence on two key issues: i) it measures the impact of rewards programs on the...