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Author:Stavins, Joanna 

Report
Personality Traits and Financial Outcomes

Surveys indicate that about 4.5 percent of US households do not have a bank account and about one-quarter do not own any credit cards. Among credit cardholders, revolving credit card debt (carrying unpaid balances) is common. Using data from the 2021 Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice and the University of Southern California’s Understanding America Study, this paper looks at whether self-reported personality traits have a significant effect on these financial outcomes when the analysis considers consumers’ income, demographics, and financial literacy. Specifically, it studies ...
Consumer Payments Research Data Reports , Paper 2023-02

Report
2023 Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice

For 2023, the Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment choice found the following: • US consumers made more payments in 2023. o Compared to October 2022, there were statistically significant increases in the number of all payments (to 45.6 on average per month), in the number of all types of card payments (29.5), and in payments via mobile app (13). o The share of purchases made remotely increased to 22 percent, up 4 percentage points from 2022 and more than double the share of remote purchases before the COVID-19 pandemic. • Mobile has won over three-quarters of US consumers. o 72 percent of ...
Consumer Payments Research Data Reports , Paper 2024-01

Report
2019 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice

In October 2019, almost half of all payments (43 percent) U.S. consumers made were for groceries, gas, and shopping, both in person and online. The distribution was different by value, as 40 percent of payments were for financial services, including mortgages, credit card bills, other loan payments, insurance, investments, and so on. The most commonly used payment instruments were debit cards, cash, and credit cards, which jointly accounted for 80 percent of all payments by number and 37 percent by value. By value, about 40 percent of consumer payments were made via ACH payments, executed ...
Consumer Payments Research Data Reports , Paper 2020-04

Working Paper
Payment discounts and surcharges: the role of consumer preferences

We use new data from the 2015 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice to analyze price discounts and surcharges based on the payment method used for transactions. We examine consumer preferences for specific payment instruments and test whether consumer demand for payment instruments is price elastic. Specifically, we test whether consumers are likely to deviate from their preferred methods in order to get a discount or to avoid a surcharge. We find that the occurrence of price incentives is low, but consumers who preferred other payment methods had an 11.7 percent probability of switching to cash ...
Working Papers , Paper 17-4

Working Paper
Explaining adoption and use of payment instruments by U. S. consumers

The way that consumers make payments is changing rapidly and attracts important current policy interest. This paper develops and estimates a structural model of adoption and use of payment instruments by U.S. consumers. We use a cross-section of data from the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, a new survey of consumer behavior. We evaluate substitution and income effects. Our simulations shed light on the consumer response to the 2011 regulation of interchange fees on debit cards imposed by the Dodd-Frank Act, as well as the proposed settlement between Visa and MasterCard and the Department ...
Working Papers , Paper 12-14

Report
Merchant Steering of Consumer Payment Choice: Lessons Learned From Consumer Surveys

Recent policy changes allow merchants to influence consumers' choice of payment instruments by offering price discounts and other incentives. This report describes lessons learned from using consumer survey responses to assess whether merchants tried to influence buyers' choice of payment method. To measure the effects of these recent policy changes, we included questions about merchant steering in pilot versions of a new diary survey of U.S. consumers. Our findings are inconclusive because some respondents interpreted the questions differently from the way we intended. This report aims to ...
Consumer Payments Research Data Reports , Paper 2013-01

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

Using data from the United States and Canada, we quantify consumers’ net pecuniary cost of using cash, credit cards, and debit cards for purchases across income cohorts. The net cost includes fees paid to financial institutions, rewards received from credit or debit card issuers, and the higher retail prices passed on to consumers to cover merchants’ payment processing costs. Even though credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept compared with other payment methods, merchants typically do not differentiate prices at checkout but instead pass through their costs to all ...
Research Working Paper , Paper RWP 20-18

Working Paper
Merchant steering of consumer payment choice: evidence from a 2012 Diary survey

This paper seeks to discover whether U.S. merchants are using their recently granted freedom to offer price discounts and other incentives to steer customers to pay with methods that are less costly to merchants. Using evidence of merchant steering based on the 2012 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, we find that only a very small fraction of transactions received a cash or debit card discount, and even fewer were subjected to a credit card surcharge. Transactions at gasoline stations were more likely to receive either cash discounts or credit card surcharges than transactions in other ...
Working Papers , Paper 14-1

Report
The 2011 and 2012 Surveys of Consumer Payment Choice: Summary Results

In 2012, the number of consumer payments did not change significantly from 2010 as the economy settled into steady expansion following the financial crisis and recession. After increasing by 28 percent from 2008 to 2010, cash payments by consumers fell back by 10 percent from 2010 to 2012, while the share of cash payments dropped for a third straight year to 26.8 percent. However, the number and dollar value of cash withdrawals and the dollar value of cash holdings by consumers increased in 2012. Credit and charge card payments by consumers, which declined in 2009, rebounded further, ...
Consumer Payments Research Data Reports , Paper 2014-01

Report
2022 Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice

In October 2022, US consumers reported making 39 payments per month on average, unchanged from 2021 when adjusted for questionnaire changes. As a share of all payments by number, most payments were by credit card (31 percent) or debit card (29 percent). By value, 43 percent of payments value was made electronically from a bank account using one of two ACH methods and 35 percent were made using a card (debit, credit, or prepaid).
Consumer Payments Research Data Reports , Paper 2023-03

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