IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedkrw/rwp14-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Recurrent overdrafts: a deliberate decision by some prepaid cardholders?

Author

Listed:
  • Emily Cuddy
  • Fumiko Hayashi

Abstract

Overdrafts have been an ongoing concern of policymakers, and they are one of the main issues being considered for prepaid card rules that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is currently drafting. Despite regulatory interventions and heated debate between proponents and opponents of further intervention, little research has been conducted to understand the overdraft behavior of prepaid cardholders. This paper attempts to fill that gap by analyzing a large micro-level dataset of general purpose reloadable (GPR) prepaid cardholders. We find that a small percentage of GPR prepaid cardholders regularly make overdraft transactions and incur overdraft fees, but they tend to spend and load more funds on their card as well as use their card for a longer period of time than do cardholders who do not make overdraft transactions. Our results suggest that some cardholders may be making a deliberate decision to overdraw their account and pay overdraft fees.

Suggested Citation

  • Emily Cuddy & Fumiko Hayashi, 2014. "Recurrent overdrafts: a deliberate decision by some prepaid cardholders?," Research Working Paper RWP 14-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedkrw:rwp14-08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/7719/rwp14-08.pdf
    File Function: Full-text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Victor Stango & Jonathan Zinman, 2014. "Limited and Varying Consumer Attention: Evidence from Shocks to the Salience of Bank Overdraft Fees," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(4), pages 990-1030.
    2. Zinman, Jonathan, 2010. "Restricting consumer credit access: Household survey evidence on effects around the Oregon rate cap," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 546-556, March.
    3. Robert M. Hunt & Stephanie M. Wilshusen, 2012. "Consumers’ use of prepaid cards: a transaction-based analysis," Consumer Finance Institute discussion papers 12-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    4. Donald P. Morgan & Michael R. Strain & Ihab Seblani, 2012. "How Payday Credit Access Affects Overdrafts and Other Outcomes," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44, pages 519-531, March.
    5. Emily Cuddy & Fumiko Hayashi, 2014. "General purpose reloadable prepaid cards : penetration, use, fees and fraud risks," Research Working Paper RWP 14-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Josh Hanson & Fumiko Hayashi & Jesse Leigh Maniff, 2015. "Driver of choice? the cost of financial products for unbanked consumers," Research Working Paper RWP 15-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    2. Claire Greene & Mi Luo, 2015. "Consumers' use of overdraft protection," Research Data Report 15-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Melzer, Brian T. & Morgan, Donald P., 2015. "Competition in a consumer loan market: Payday loans and overdraft credit," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 25-44.
    2. Daniel Bjorkegren & Joshua Blumenstock & Omowunmi Folajimi-Senjobi & Jacqueline Mauro & Suraj R. Nair, 2022. "Instant Loans Can Lift Subjective Well-Being: A Randomized Evaluation of Digital Credit in Nigeria," Papers 2202.13540, arXiv.org.
    3. Marieke Bos & Chloé Le Coq & Peter van Santen, 2022. "Scarcity and consumers’ credit choices," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(1), pages 105-139, February.
    4. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    5. Bernardus Van Doornik & Armando Gomes & David Schoenherr & Janis Skrastins, 2021. "Financial Access and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Credit Lotteries," Working Papers 2021-56, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    6. Fedaseyeu, Viktar, 2020. "Debt collection agencies and the supply of consumer credit," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 193-221.
    7. James R. Barth & Jitka Hilliard & John S. Jahera & Kang B. Lee & Yanfei Sun, 2020. "Payday lending, crime, and bankruptcy: Is there a connection?," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 1159-1177, December.
    8. Eoin McLaughlin & Rowena Pecchenino, 2022. "Fringe banking and financialization: Pawnbroking in pre‐famine and famine Ireland," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(3), pages 903-931, August.
    9. Cuffe, Harold E. & Gibbs, Christopher G., 2017. "The effect of payday lending restrictions on liquor sales," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 132-145.
    10. Neil Bhutta & Jacob Goldin & Tatiana Homonoff, 2016. "Consumer Borrowing after Payday Loan Bans," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(1), pages 225-259.
    11. Madeira, Carlos, 2019. "The impact of interest rate ceilings on households’ credit access: Evidence from a 2013 Chilean legislation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 166-179.
    12. Sumit Agarwal & Tal Gross & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2016. "How Did the Great Recession Affect Payday Loans?," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue 2, pages 1-12.
    13. Victor Medina-Olivares & Raffaella Calabrese, 2023. "Detecting Consumers' Financial Vulnerability using Open Banking Data: Evidence from UK Payday Loans," Papers 2306.01749, arXiv.org.
    14. Dasgupta, Kabir & Mason, Brenden J., 2020. "The effect of interest rate caps on bankruptcy: Synthetic control evidence from recent payday lending bans," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    15. Bernardus F Nazar Van Doornik & Armando Gomes & David Schoenherr & Janis Skrastins, 2023. "Financial access and labor market outcomes: evidence from credit lotteries," BIS Working Papers 1071, Bank for International Settlements.
    16. J. Brandon Bolen & Gregory Elliehausen & Thomas W. Miller, 2020. "Do Consumers Need More Protection From Small‐Dollar Lenders? Historical Evidence And A Roadmap For Future Research," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(4), pages 1577-1613, October.
    17. James Barth & Jitka Hilliard & John Jahera, 2015. "Banks and Payday Lenders: Friends or Foes?," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 21(2), pages 139-153, May.
    18. Bos, Marieke & Le Coq, Chloé & van Santen, Peter, 2016. "Economic Scarcity and Consumers’ Credit Choice," Working Paper Series 329, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    19. Wang, Jialan & Burke, Kathleen, 2022. "The effects of disclosure and enforcement on payday lending in Texas," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 489-507.
    20. Thomas A. Hemphill, 0. "The small-dollar loan industry: a new era of regulatory reform—and emerging competition?," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 0, pages 1-11.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Overdrafts; General purpose reloadable prepaid cards; Unbanked and underbanked;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedkrw:rwp14-08. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Zach Kastens (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbkcus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.