This article reviews the current landscape for payment discounts and surcharges, considers whether they influence consumer payment choice, and offers several policy responses.

This article summarizes analysis from three recent Economic Review articles on how changes to card payment technology and debit card regulation will affect the U.S. retail payments system in years to come.

We analyze the no surcharge rule (NSR) and its impact on merchant competition by comparing different surcharging regimes. Any constraint on surcharging, including the NSR is shown to be a competition-softening device. A NSR may induce socially excessive card use. Allowing imperfectly competitive...

When commerce goes electronic, the means of paying for goods and services must also go electronic. Thus, for electronic commerce it is also necessary to change payment mode from physical to logical. Many businesses accept payment by card for their goods and services and this can undoubtedly...

Germans are still very fond of using cash. Of all direct payments transactions in 2008, cash accounted for an astounding 82 % in terms of number and for 58 % in terms of value. With a dataset that combines transaction information with survey data on payment behaviour of German consumers, we...