Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Competition Policy Issues In The Consumer Payments Industry, Nicholas Economides

Nicholas Economides

We discuss the current structure of card networks that facilitate transactions between merchants and consumers. We find that presently fees for this intermediation are considerably higher than costs. This is facilitated by rules imposed by the card networks on the merchants that do not allow merchants to steer competition to cards that have lower fees. It has also been facilitated by the requirement that a merchant has to accept all cards of the same network (honor all cards rule) -- recently abolished in the US, as well as by the fact that the networks set the maximum interface fee between …