1. Financial Technology Adoption: Network Externalities of Cashless Payments in Mexico.
- Author
-
Higgins, Sean
- Subjects
FINANCIAL technology ,POINT-of-sale systems ,ELECTRONIC funds transfers ,SUPPLY & demand ,INNOVATION adoption ,DEBIT cards - 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. (JEL E42, L25, L81, O14, O33) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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