Cashless Payments and the Persistence of Cash: Open Questions About Mexico

Gustavo Del Angel

No 16108, Economics Working Papers from Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Abstract: This essay analyzes the trends in payments in Mexico since 2002 and argues that there has been an important growth in the use of cashless digital payment instruments, namely the use of credit and debit cards, electronic funds transfers (EFTs) and mobile banking. However, the use of cash widely persists in the Mexican economy. The essay discusses the factors behind the persistence of the use of cash, and argues that low financial inclusion and informal economic activity are considered the main causes. Equally relevant is the fact that digital instruments are not a perfect substitute for cash as money yet, as it is the need to adequate payments services to the convenience and trust of segments of users, mainly population that still has little use or no access to financial services.

JEL-codes: E42 E49 G20 G21 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2016-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pr~, nep-iue, nep-mac and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research ... sh_-_del_angel_0.pdf

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:hoo:wpaper:16108

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from Hoover Institution, Stanford University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Webmaster ().