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142 Results

Cash Versus Card: Payment Discontinuities and the Burden of Holding Coins

Staff Working Paper 2017-47 Heng Chen, Kim Huynh, Oz Shy
Cash is the preferred method of payment for small value transactions generally less than $25. We provide insight to this finding with a new theoretical model that characterizes and compares consumers’ costs of paying with cash to paying with cards for each transaction.
November 16, 2017

Acceptance and Use of Payments at the Point of Sale in Canada

Merchants universally accept cash. Consumers widely hold cash but also carry debit and credit cards. The cost of using a method of payment has only a small influence on which method consumers use. Large merchants accept all payments, while only two-thirds of small and medium-sized businesses accept credit cards. Merchants report that credit cards are the costliest payment method compared with cash and debit cards. However, costs are not the only consideration. Merchant acceptance of credit accounts for the many con-sumers that want to use credit cards. This interaction between consumers and merchants is known as network externalities.

The Costs of Point-of-Sale Payments in Canada

Using data from our 2014 cost-of-payments survey, we calculate resource costs for cash, debit cards and credit cards. For each payment method, we examine the total cost incurred by consumers, retailers, financial institutions and infrastructures, the Royal Canadian Mint and the Bank of Canada.

Adoption Costs of Financial Innovation: Evidence from Italian ATM Cards

The discrete choice to adopt a financial innovation affects a household’s exposure to inflation and transactions costs. We model this adoption decision as being subject to an unobserved cost.

Canadian Bank Notes and Dominion Notes: Lessons for Digital Currencies

Staff Working Paper 2017-5 Ben Fung, Scott Hendry, Warren E. Weber
This paper studies the period in Canada when both private bank notes and government-issued notes (Dominion notes) were simultaneously in circulation. Because both of these notes shared many of the characteristics of today's digital currencies, the experience with these notes can be used to draw lessons about how digital currencies might perform.
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