Paying with plastic
Subtitle: the digital revolution in buying and borrowing
By: David S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee
Contributors: Schmalensee, Richard
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 373
ISBN-13: 9780262050623; 9780262550376
Subjects: Commerce électronique; Electronic funds transfers; Credit cards; Cartes de crédit; Electronic commerce; Monnaie électronique; Bank credit cards; Consumer credit; Cartes bancaires; Elektronisch betalingsverkeer; Crédit à la consommation
Description: "In Paying with Plastic, David Evans and Richard Schmalensee provide a nontechnical distillation of their years of research on the economic, technological, and institutional forces that have shaped the payment card industry. They show how competition works in an industry that does not nearly fit any of the standard economic models.

They describe how the entrepreneurs in this industry solved the chicken-and-egg problem: merchants will not take cards if few consumers use them, and consumers will not use cards if few merchants take them. They also describe how the payment card companies such as MasterCard and Visa have developed complex systems for coordinating transactions among their thousands of bank members and millions of card-holders and accepting merchants.

Evans and Schmalensee also describe recent developments in the industry and consider its likely evolution."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 327-359) and index.
Table of contents: title: Plastic cards; title: From sea shells to electrons; title: A land of local banks, awash in paper checks; title: The rise of payment cards; title: From gourmets to the masses; title: Everywhere you want to be, not everywhere they want to be; title: Chicken's eggs and other economic conundrums; title: System wars; title: Issuer brawls; title: Puzzles and paradoxes; title: The antitrust wars; title: Debit takes off (finally); title: And they don't take cash.