Fractal behind smart shopping

The 'minimal' payment - a payment method which minimizes the number of coins in a purse - is presented. We focus on a time series of change given back to a shopper repeating the minimal payment. The delay plot shows visually that the set of successive change possesses a fine structure similar to the Sierpinski gasket. We also estimate effectivity of the minimal-payment method by means of the average number of coins in a purse, and conclude that the minimal-payment strategy is the best to reduce the number of coins in a purse. Moreover, we compare our results to the rule-60 cellular automaton and the Pascal-Sierpinski gaskets, which are known as generators of the discrete Sierpinski gasket.Comment: 16 page

Innovations, incentives, and regulation: forces shaping the payments environment

The migration to more efficient payment mechanisms is affected by innovations, incentives, and regulation. While advances in technology have yielded numerous payment method alternatives, many have not been widely adopted. A recent Chicago Fed conference explored why certain payment innovations have been more successful than others.Payment systems

Multihoming in the market for payment media: evidence from young Finnish consumers

In the market for payment media, some consumers use only one medium when paying for their point-of-sale transactions, while others multihome and use many. As this pattern reflects the diffusion of new payment media, we take a look at the determinants of the adoption of new payment media through the window of multihoming. Using data on young Finnish consumers, we find that one key determinant of multihoming behaviour is consumer awareness. Our instrumental variable estimates indicate that the better informed use 1.2–1.3 times more payment media than the less informed. Because many payment method innovations are typically first used simultaneously with established methods, our results suggest that increasing consumer awareness could significantly speed up the adoption of new means of payment, such electronic money and mobile payments.payment media; multihoming; consumer awareness; adoption of financial technology

Characteristics of Mobile Payment Procedures

Companies are not going to invest into the development of innovative applications or services unless these can be charged for appropriately. Thus, the existence of standardized and widely accepted mobile payment procedures is crucial for successful business-to-customer mobile commerce. The acceptance of mobile payment procedures depends on costs, security and convenience issues. For the latter, it is important that a procedure can be used over the different payment scenarios mobile commerce, electronic commerce, stationary merchant and customer-to-customer. Current payment procedures can be categorized with strategic, participation and operational criteria, using the morphological method. The proposed scheme allows to unambiguously identify and characterize any given mobile payment procedure. The design of today's mobile payment procedures should less try to optimize on the future mobile commerce problems but focus on the ease of spreading in the electronic commerce setting as lead-in scenario.

OPTIMAL DESIGN OF A VOLUNTARY GREEN PAYMENT PROGRAM UNDER ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION

Green payment programs, where the government pays farmers directly for environmental benefits, are an alternative to the current method of achieving environmental benefits which restricts farming practices in exchange for deficiency payments. This article presents a voluntary green payment program using the principles of mechanism design under asymmetric information. Information asymmetry arises because the government knows only the distribution of farmersÂ’' production situations, rather than farm-specific information. The program is demonstrated with irrigated corn production in the Oklahoma high plains. A green payment program can reduce budget costs and pollution, while increasing the net social value of corn production.Environmental Economics and Policy,

How to pay in LicenseScript

Current DRM systems do not provide flexible payment methods, requiring the user to handle the payment by hand. For instance, when the user needs to pay for watching a movie, she needs to decide which available payment method is the most optimal and suitable. This is a rather cumbersome process for the user that can be avoided by the specification of payment policies. A payment policy automates the payment process of each content usage, choosing the best alternative among the possible payment methods. We show how LicenseScript is able to model payment policies, allowing the user to precisely specify how a payment of content usage should be performed

ELECTRONIC COMMERCE SECURITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MEANS OF PAYMENT DEMATERIALIZATION

Some items regarding electronic commerce, electronic vulnerabilities, electronic means of payment, digital money and electronic micropayments are presented below. Then is presented a method of assessing the quality of applications and e-commerce Web sites. This method is then adapted from the operational point of view, developed and implemented in the study of the electronic micropayment systems’ security, in the purpose of analyzing and evaluating their security in the context of the means of payment dematerialization.e-commerce, micropayment, security, encryption, digital economy, EWAM

Outcome Versus Service Based Payment in Health Care: Lessons from African Traditional Healers

We compare the more common physician compensation method of fee-for-service to the less common payment-for-outcomes method. This paper combines an investigation of the theoretical properties of both of these payment regimes with a unique data set from rural Cameroon in which patients can choose between outcome and service based payments. We show that consideration of the role of patient effort in the production of health leads to important differences in the performance of these contracts. Theory and empirical evidence show that when illnesses require (or are responsive to) large amounts of both patient and practitioner effort, outcome based payment schemes are superior to effort based schemes. The traditional healer -- a practitioner who offers health services on an outcome-contingent basis -- is advanced as an important example of how patient effort can be better understood and tapped in health care.

Payment Choice in REIT Property Acquisitions

This study examines payment choice in equity real estate investment trust (REIT) property acquisitions. Particular attention is paid to the tax-advantaged medium of exchange available to some REITs (i.e., operating partnership units). The tax argument that is often cited as an underlying rationale for hypotheses relating bidder gains, payment method and acquisitions is empirically tested via the relationship between sales price differentials and the method of payment. The payment signaling hypothesis and other competing medium of exchange hypotheses are also empirically tested using a data set generously provided by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts.