E42 - Monetary Systems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System; Payment Systems

• Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in Canada and the United States

  Staff Working Paper 2021-8 Marie-Hélène Felt, Fumiko Hayashi, Joanna Stavins, Angelika Welte

  Although credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept than cash or debit cards, merchants typically pass through their costs evenly to all customers. Along with consumer card rewards and banking fees, this creates cross-subsidies between payment methods. Because higher-income individuals tend to use credit cards more than those with lower incomes, our results indicate that these cross-subsidies might lead to regressive distributional effects.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Financial institutions, Financial services, Market structure and pricing, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, D2, D23, D3, D31, E, E4, E42, G, G2, G21, L, L8, L81

• Estimating Policy Functions in Payments Systems Using Reinforcement Learning

  Staff Working Paper 2021-7 Pablo S. Castro, Ajit Desai, Han Du, Rodney Garratt, Francisco Rivadeneyra

  We demonstrate the ability of reinforcement learning techniques to estimate the best-response functions of banks participating in high-value payments systems—a real-world strategic game of incomplete information.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Digital currencies and fintech, Financial institutions, Financial system regulation and policies, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): A, A1, A12, C, C7, D, D8, D83, E, E4, E42, E5, E58

• Eggs in One Basket: Security and Convenience of Digital Currencies

  Staff Working Paper 2021-6 Charles M. Kahn, Francisco Rivadeneyra, Tsz-Nga Wong

  Digital currencies store balances in anonymous electronic addresses. This paper analyzes the trade-offs between the safety and convenience of aggregating balances in addresses, electronic wallets and banks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Digital currencies and fintech, Financial services, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): E, E4, E42, E5, E51, E58

• Using Payments Data to Nowcast Macroeconomic Variables During the Onset of COVID-19

  Staff Working Paper 2021-2 James Chapman, Ajit Desai

  We use retail payment data in conjunction with machine learning techniques to predict the effects of COVID-19 on the Canadian economy in near-real time. We find this approach yields a significant increase in forecasting precision over a linear benchmark model. This model can help policy-makers before official data are released.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, C55, E, E3, E37, E4, E42, E5, E52