Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Who Gains and Who Loses from Credit Card Payments? written by Scott Schuh and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merchant fees and reward programs generate an implicit monetary transfer to credit card users from non-card (or ¿cash¿) users because merchants generally do not set differential prices for card users to recoup the costs of fees and rewards. On average, each cash-using household pays $151 to card-using households and each card-using household receives $1,482 from cash users every year. The payment instrument transfer also induces a regressive transfer from low-income to high-income households in general. The authors build and calibrate a model of consumer payment choice to compute the effects of merchant fees and card rewards on consumer welfare. Reducing merchant fees and card rewards would likely increase consumer welfare.