American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Financial Technology Adoption: Network Externalities of Cashless Payments in Mexico
American Economic Review
vol. 114,
no. 11, November 2024
(pp. 3469–3512)
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.Citation
Higgins, Sean. 2024. "Financial Technology Adoption: Network Externalities of Cashless Payments in Mexico." American Economic Review, 114 (11): 3469–3512. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20201952Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- E42 Monetary Systems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System; Payment Systems
- L25 Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope
- L81 Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
- O14 Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
- O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes