Financial Technology Adoption: Network Externalities of Cashless Payments in Mexico

S-Tier
Journal: American Economic Review
Year: 2024
Volume: 114
Issue: 11
Pages: 3469-3512

Score contribution per author:

8.043 = (α=2.01 / 1 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Do coordination failures constrain financial technology adoption? Exploiting the Mexican government's rollout of 1 million debit cards to poor households from 2009 to 2012, I examine responses on both sides of the market and find important spillovers and distributional impacts. On the supply side, small retail firms adopted point-of-sale terminals to accept card payments. On the demand side, this led to a 21 percent increase in other consumers' card adoption. The supply-side technology adoption response had positive effects on both richer consumers and small retail firms: richer consumers shifted 13 percent of their supermarket consumption to small retailers, whose sales and profits increased.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:aea:aecrev:v:114:y:2024:i:11:p:3469-3512
Journal Field
General
Author Count
1
Added to Database
2026-02-02