Why Do Debit Card Networks Charge Percentage Fees?

David A. Price and Zhu Wang

Richmond Fed Economic Brief, 2013, issue Feb

Abstract: Why do debit card networks base their fees on a percentage of transaction amounts when the marginal cost of executing a transaction does not vary by amount? Research suggests that this type of fee structure, a linear ad valorem fee, maximizes profits for card networks by allowing price discrimination. Also, because percentage fees make card usage more economical for lower-value transactions, such a fee structure tends to increase social welfare.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/historica ... urce=direct_download Full Text (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedreb:00013

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Richmond Fed Economic Brief from Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Pascasio ().