Digital Payments Interoperabillity with Naïve Consumers

Résumé

We consider a model in which consumers live in isolated villages and need to send money to each other. Each village has (at most) one digital payment provider, which acts as a bridge to other villages. With fully rational consumers interoperability is beneficial: it raises financial inclusion, which in turn increases consumer surplus. With behavioural consumers who have imperfect information or incorrect beliefs about off-net fees, interoperability can reduce consumer welfare. Policies that cap transaction fees have an ambiguous effect on consumers, depending on how the cap is implemented, whether consumers are rational, and on how asymmetric providers are in terms of coverage.