The Liquidity Premium of Digital Payment Vehicle

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chen, Zefeng; Jiang, Zhengyang
• 署名单位: Peking University; Northwestern University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2023.01309
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 5605-5624
• 关键词: digital payment; Liquidity premium; money market fund; FinTech

摘要

Do digital payment technologies generate liquidity premia like cash and Treasury? We provide an estimate in the context of the world's largest digital payment platform, Alipay. Our empirical strategy exploits the variation in the timing of the introduction of money market funds that users on this platform can hold and use for digital transactions. We find that, once a fund becomes eligible for these transactions, its size increases by 45 times on average. Through the lens of an equilibrium demand system model, we show that this size increase implies a liquidity premium of 0.8% per annum. This result provides a unique perspective for understanding and calibrating the liquidity premium of digital currencies.