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Payment Systems and Interchange Fees

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Richard Schmalensee

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Abstract

In a typical bank credit card transaction, the merchant's bank pays an interchange fee, collectively determined by all participating banks, to the cardholder's bank. This paper shows how the interchange fee balances charges between cardholders and merchants under imperfect competition. The privately optimal fee depends mainly on differences between cardholders' and merchants' banks, not their collective market power. In a non-extreme case, the profit-maximizing interchange fee also maximizes total output and producers' plus consumers' surplus. There is no economic basis for favoring proprietary payment systems, which do not need interchange fees to balance charges, over the cooperative bank card systems.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 8256.

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Date of creation: Apr 2001
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8256

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L - Industrial Organization

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  1. Schmalensee, Richard, 1976. "A Model of Promotional Competition in Oligopoly," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(3), pages 493-507, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Dixit, Avinash K, 1986. "Comparative Statics for Oligopoly," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 27(1), pages 107-22, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Jean-Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Cooperation Among Competitors: Some Economics Of Payment Card Associations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 33(4), pages 549-570, Winter.
  4. Baxter, William F, 1983. "Bank Interchange of Transactional Paper: Legal and Economic Perspectives," Journal of Law & Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(3), pages 541-88, October.
  5. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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This page was last updated on 2009-11-21.

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