Why Do Shoppers Use Cash? Evidence from Shopping Diary Data

Recent studies find that cash remains a dominant payment choice for small-value transactions despite the prevalence of alternative methods of payment such as debit and credit cards. For policy makers an important question is whether consumers truly prefer using cash or merchants restrict card usage. Using unique shopping diary data, we estimate a payment choice model with individual unobserved heterogeneity (demandside factors) while controlling for merchants’ acceptance of cards (supply-side factors). Based on a policy simulation where we impose universal card acceptance among merchants, we find that overall cash usage would decrease by only 7.7 percentage points, implying that cash usage in small-value transactions is driven mainly by consumers’ preferences

Wait a minute: The efficacy of discounting versus non-pecuniary payment steering

Merchants who accept credit cards face payment processing fees. In most countries, the no-surcharge rule prohibits them from using surcharges to pass these fees on to customers. However, merchants are allowed to steer consumers toward less costly payment methods by offering discounts or using non-pecuniary incentives such as convenience and speed. Drawing upon micro data from a survey of Canadian households, I estimate a discrete choice model of consumers' payment methods to establish merchant costs for both of these strategies. I find that, while discounts are unprofitable because they subsidize a large portion of consumers who are already using cash and debit cards, non-pecuniary steering can be an effective strategy for transactions above $25

The 2021-22 Merchant Acceptance Survey pilot study

In recent years, the rise in digital payment innovations such as contactless cards and Interac e-Transfer has spurred a discussion about the future of cash at the point of sale. The COVID19 pandemic has also contributed to this discussion: While consumers reported that some merchants started to refuse cash early in the pandemic, such reported refusals dropped as the pandemic progressed. The Bank of Canada's most recent Merchant Acceptance Survey (MAS) took place in 2018, prompting a need for updated data to study merchant cash acceptance, payment trends and conditions for the potential issuance of a central bank digital currency (Lane 2020, 2021a). Against this background, the Bank conducted the 2021-22 MAS Pilot Study to monitor payment methods accepted by small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Survey data was collected from merchants in two batches, in late 2021 and early 2022. Our results show that 97% of SMBs in Canada accepted cash in 2021-22 and only 3% have plans to stop accepting cash. For cards and digital payments, merchant acceptance has increased since 2018. Additionally, the acceptance of different payment methods varies by the size of the merchant, industry and region

The Bank of Canada's 2009 Methods-of-Payment survey: Methodology and key results

The authors present the methodology and main findings of the Bank of Canada's 2009 Methods-of-Payment survey, a detailed investigation of consumer payment behaviour in Canada. The survey targeted the 18- to 75-year-old Canadian resident population. During November 2009, participants answered a questionnaire about their demographics, personal finance, and payment instrument habits and perceptions. Of the 6,868 questionnaire respondents, about half also completed a 3-day shopping diary, recording close to 16,000 shopping transactions. The survey gives a detailed account of Canadians' cash management habits and payment instrument choices and provides important clues into the reasons why Canadians pay the way they do

The market for acquiring card payments from small and medium-sized Canadian merchants

This note uses industry data and a unique dataset of small and medium-sized merchants to provide insights into the acquirer-merchant market in Canada. Three main findings are presented. First, smaller merchants pay their acquirer more for every dollar of card payment than larger merchants. Second, this finding is mainly explained by high fixed costs. Third, the acquiring market in Canada is concentrated and has remained fairly stable since 2010

Payment habits during COVID-19: Evidence from high-frequency transaction data

We investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed consumers' payments habits in Canada. We rely on high-frequency data on cash withdrawals and debit card transactions from Interac Corp. and Canada's Automated Clearing Settlement System. We construct daily measures of payment habits reflecting cash usage, average transaction values, and the share of transactions in which the customer or card holder and the acquiring machine (ATM or POS) are of the same bank. Using simple dummy regressions and local projection models, we assess how these indicators of payment habits have changed with the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find evidence that during the pandemic consumers adjusted their behaviour by avoiding frequent trips for cash withdrawals and point-of-sale purchases and making fewer transactions for higher amounts. They also made smaller-value cash withdrawals compared with the value of card payments, which could reflect a reduced use of cash for point-of-sale transactions. Consumers also made relatively more withdrawals from ATMs that are linked to their financial institution (on-us transactions). Finally, we highlight that estimates of economic activity based on card data alone could be biased if shifts in payment habits are not taken into account. We estimate that debit card payments might have overstated consumer expenditure growth by up to 7 percentage points over the course of the pandemic

Untapped potential: Mobile device ownership and mobile payments in Canada

Mobile phones are ubiquitous around the world, making them obvious conduits for innovative payment technologies, or mobile payments. In Canada, five out of six adults regularly use a mobile phone. However, they have not started to use mobile payments at the same rate as other payment innovations, such as contactless card payments. In this paper, we present a twostage model of mobile phone and mobile payment use. An important feature of the model is that it controls for selectivity due to mobile device adoption. Controlling for selection into mobile phone usage reveals unobserved factors that have negative effects on mobile phone usage but a positive effect on the propensity to use mobile-type payments. These factors could be preferences or constraints. We present empirical evidence that providing people without a mobile phone access to payments with features similar to mobile payments could result in usage rates exceeding the current use among mobile phone owners. Therefore, people who are unable to acquire or choose not to own a mobile device might have unmet payment needs

2017 Methods-of-Payment survey report

As the sole issuer of bank notes, the Bank of Canada conducts Methods-of-Payment (MOP) surveys to obtain a detailed and representative snapshot of Canadian payment choices, with a focus on cash usage. The 2017 MOP Survey is the third iteration. This paper finds that the overall cash volume and value shares are 33 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively. These results highlight the ongoing decrease of cash usage in terms of volume and value compared with 2009 (54 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively) and 2013 (44 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively). Consumers still rate cash as an easy-to-use, low-cost, secure and widely accepted payment method, and it is commonly used among respondents who are aged 55 and above, have an income of less than $45,000, have only a high school education, or have a low rate of financial literacy. The paper also provides comprehensive details on Canadians' adoption and use of payment innovations such as contactless credit and debit cards, as well as mobile and online payments