Payment card networks, such as Visa, require merchants' banks to pay substantial 'interchange' fees to cardholders' banks, on a per transaction basis. This paper shows that a network's profit-maximizing fee induces an inefficient price structure, over-subsidizing card usage and over-taxing...

Payment card networks, such as Visa, require merchants' banks to pay substantial "interchange" fees to cardholders' banks, on a per transaction basis. This paper shows that a network's profit-maximizing fee induces an inefficient price structure, over-subsidizing card usage and over-taxing...

In a payment card association such as Visa, each time a consumer pays by card, the bank of the merchant (acquirer) pays an interchange fee (IF) to the bank of the cardholder (issuer) to carry out the transaction. This paper studies the determinants of socially and privately optimal IFs in a card...

Payment card networks, such as Visa, require merchants' banks to pay substantial "interchange" fees to cardholders' banks, on a per transaction basis. This paper shows that a network's profit-maximizing fee induces an inefficient price structure, over-subsidizing card usage and over-taxing...

Payment card networks, such as Visa, require merchants' banks to pay substantial quot;interchangequot; fees to cardholders' banks, on a per transaction basis. This paper shows that a network's profit-maximizing fee induces an inefficient price structure, over-subsidizing card usage and...

The provision of retail payment services is complex with many participants engaging in a series of interrelated bilateral transactions and subject to large economies of scale and scope along with strong adoption, usage and network externalities. This makes sound public policy difficult. We focus...

Payment networks typically differentiate their interchange fees (IFs) by setting a variety of sector-specific IFs for the same payment card. While the previous literature on IFs has focussed on the optimal level of IFs, this paper addresses the optimal structure of IFs, i.e. whether or not IF...

In this paper, we discuss how fraud liability regimes impact the price structure that is chosen by a monopolistic payment platform, in a setting where merchants can invest in fraud detection technologies. We show that liability allocation rules distort the price structure charged by platforms or...

In this paper, we discuss how fraud losses impact the price structure chosen by a monopolistic payment platform, if merchants can invest in fraud detection technologies. We show that liability rules bias the structure of the prices charged by the platform to consumers and merchants with respect...