Consumer Surplus of Alternative Payment Methods

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Alvarez, Fernando; Argente, David
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; Yale University
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdae112
• 发表日期: 2024
• 关键词: money; adoption

摘要

This paper estimates the consumer surplus from using alternative payment methods. We use evidence from Uber rides in Mexico, where riders have the option to use cash or cards to pay for rides. We design and conduct three large-scale field experiments, which involved approximately 400,000 riders. We also build a structural model which, disciplined by our new experimental data, allows us to estimate the loss of private benefits for riders when a ban on cash payments is implemented. We find that Uber riders who use cash as means of payment either sometimes or exclusively suffer an average loss of approximately 40-50% of their total trip expenditures paid in cash before the ban. The magnitude of these estimates reflects the intensity with which cash is used in the application, the shape of the demand curve for Uber rides, and the imperfect substitutability across means of payments. Welfare losses fall mostly on the least-advantaged households, who rely more heavily on the cash payment option.