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on Payment Systems and Financial Technology |
| By: | Wenxin Du; Catherine Huang; David Scharfstein |
| Abstract: | Cross-border payments remain slow and expensive despite significant improvements in digital financial infrastructure over the past several decades. This paper compares the cost of sending cross-border payments across three payment rails: traditional banks operating through the correspondent banking system and SWIFT, fintech money trans fer operators (MTOs) such as Wise, Remitly, and the digital arm of Western Union, and stablecoin-based transfers. We construct harmonized all-in costs measures across these three rails for different corridors and payment values. We find that fintech MTOs have significantly compressed the costs of cross-border payments, and demonstrate that stablecoins are not a panacea for frictions in cross-border payments. |
| Keywords: | cross-border payments, fintechs, stablecoins, SWIFT |
| JEL: | E42 F31 G21 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:1385 |
| By: | Garcia, Thomas; Lambert, Claudia; Pancaro, Cosimo; Rimbaud, Claire; Soldà, Alice |
| Abstract: | Holding limits are a central design feature of proposed retail central bank digital currencies (CBDC). While such limits mechanically prevent individuals from exceeding a maximum balance, they may also generate behavioral responses whose directions are a priori unclear. We conducted an incentivized online experiment with participants from four euro-area countries, exogenously varying the presence and level of a holding limit to causally separate direct mechanical effects from behavioral effects. We find that behavioral responses increase holdings of the means of payment subject to the holding limit, consistent with an attraction effect. This effect is material only when the limit is high enough. Enabling reverse waterfall —automatic conversion into this limited means of payment— increases adoption while reducing holdings. These results suggest that combining holding limits with automatic funding mechanisms can support CBDC use while containing holdings, thereby helping to mitigate potential financial stability risks. JEL Classification: E42, C91, D14, E58 |
| Keywords: | behavioral economics, CBDC, digital currency, experimental economics, holding limits |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20263300 |
| By: | Hexiao Liu; Lijian Lu; Mingzheng Wang |
| Abstract: | Digital marketplaces increasingly earn revenue from transaction commissions and seller-facing data services. Sellers may purchase data to increase revenue or avoid competing with an informed rival. We examine how consumer disclosure rights shape these motives and the platform's incentive to provide data. We develop a game-theoretic model of a commissioned platform, two differentiated sellers, and privacy-sensitive consumers. Data generates value through bilateral sales-revenue gains and competition threats arising from asymmetric access. Under mandatory collection, the platform can monetize defensive adoption, even when bilateral personalization reduces seller revenue. Under voluntary disclosure, anonymous purchasing and strictly positive privacy costs make unilateral disclosure unattractive in the baseline. Exclusive access thus yields no usable information, restores sellers' no-data rejection payoffs, and eliminates defensive fees. Profitable provision therefore requires nonnegative bilateral revenue gains. Under full fee extraction, sellers retain their no-data net profits. This revenue alignment does not guarantee welfare gains: additional transactions may benefit consumers, whereas segmentation in an already covered market can raise anonymous prices and reduce welfare. Capping anonymous offers at their no-data benchmark protects individual consumers and limits positive-mass provision to the transaction-creation region. Extensions consider access choice, heterogeneous privacy costs, imperfect identification, and limited contractual credibility. Platforms should evaluate data services based on both bilateral-use and seller-rejection outcomes, and sellers should distinguish revenue-enhancing from defensive investments. Regulators should distinguish equal-access rules from effective consumer control and monitor pricing in anonymous channels. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.22864 |
| By: | Iñaki Aldasoro; Rashad Ahmed |
| Abstract: | We test whether stablecoins and bank deposits act as substitutes by estimating the semi-elasticity of stablecoin market capitalization with respect to deposit rate changes. Using local projections fit to weekly U.S. data from January 2019 to June 2025, we find that deposit rate increases predict slower stablecoin growth. To address endogeneity, we exploit a nonlinearity in deposit rate pass-through. Whereas other money market rates track the federal funds rate roughly linearly, banksreprice deposits more aggressively once it exceeds approximately 3%. Against average ten-week stablecoin growth of 15%, ordinary least squares estimates imply a reduction of roughly 3 percentage points per basis point of deposit repricing, or about 3.75 percentage points per one-standard-deviation move. Instrumental variable estimates are roughly three times larger and pass a placebo test using non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies. Effects are stronger for USDC than for USDT, consistent with the former’s closer ties to U.S. depositors. Cross-sectional variation in repricing across deposit tiers provides independent evidence of substitution. The size of the stablecoin sector therefore depends in part on howbanks price deposits. |
| Keywords: | stablecoins, bank deposits, deposit rates, substitution, monetary policy |
| JEL: | E42 E43 G21 G23 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:1382 |
| By: | Francis Annan; Seth Garz |
| Abstract: | Expanding access to financial services may not be enough to develop markets in low-income settings: providers also need to be held accountable to consumers. We test this in a field experiment across 195 rural Sierra Leonean communities, upgrading Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) into mobile money and bank agents, cross-randomized with a monthly consumer feedback mechanism. Upgrading expands access, but feedback drives large operational improvements (+20.5 pp, 85%), particularly in privacy and consumer protection, raising usage and revenues. Upgraded VSLAs also show higher savings digitization and higher incomes, evidence that disciplining agent actions benefits not only consumers but also the principal that finances and stands behind its agent. Interpreted through a framework of delegated intermediation, we show accountability, not infrastructure alone, aligns provider incentives with consumer welfare and is central to designing scalable financial intermediaries. |
| JEL: | C93 D22 D82 G21 O17 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35912 |
| By: | Jeffery Y. Zhang; Peter Zimmerman |
| Abstract: | The GENIUS Act of 2025 rewrites the priority and estate-property rules that govern the failure of a payment stablecoin issuer. It removes an issuer's required reserves from the bankruptcy estate and grants stablecoin holders a superpriority, capped at any reserve shortfall, over what remains. The commentary so far asks what happens inside bankruptcy once an issuer files—whether holders are actually paid and whether the case can be administered. This article identifies a different problem that arises before a filing. Because reserve assets leave the estate the moment they back a coin, a distressed firm can issue stablecoins to subordinate its existing creditors, hollow out the value a future administrator would need, and, when the firm is a bank, shift losses onto the deposit insurer and potentially the taxpayer. We call this stablecoin-on-creditor violence, drawing an analogy with the phenomenon of creditor-on-creditor violence that began with the 2016 J. Crew dropdown. Unlike in that episode, the stablecoin dropdown is on a statutory footing, meaning it is largely beyond the reach of the doctrines courts use to police its private-law cousins. We show that the subordination is accomplished by the rule carrying reserves out of the estate rather than by the celebrated superpriority. We raise concerns for financial stability: The threat of a dropdown grows with a firm's holdings of safe assets, meaning that creditors may respond negatively to a firm with a more liquid balance sheet. The harm is gravest when the subordinated creditor is the FDIC or another deposit insurer, because losses can be imposed on the rest of the financial system and the taxpayer. Importantly, the problems we raise do not rely on there being any investor demand for stablecoins. We close with a menu of responses and recommend a layered fix that federal regulators could largely implement on their own. |
| Keywords: | stablecoins; GENIUS Act; bankruptcy priority; liability management exercises; deposit insurance; financial stability |
| JEL: | G21 G28 G33 K22 K23 |
| Date: | 2026–10–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:103919 |
| By: | Antoine Chollet (MRM - Montpellier Research in Management - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - UM - Université de Montpellier) |
| Abstract: | L'enseignement de la blockchain pose des défis pédagogiques lorsqu'elle est appréhendée comme un système d'information sociotechnique complexe, et non comme un simple outil informatique. Cette recherche étudie l'intégration d'un dispositif ludopédagogique fondé sur le jeu BlockChain Battle dans le cadre du BUT Informatique. La blockchain y est abordée comme un système d'information décentralisé, impliquant des enjeux de gouvernance et de modèles économiques. Les résultats montrent que le jeu constitue un levier pertinent pour les profils novices, en favorisant une compréhension globale et critique de la technologie, tout en révélant des perceptions plus technocentrées chez les étudiants familiers des cryptomonnaies. Cette contribution met en évidence l'intérêt de la ludopédagogie comme outil de médiation scientifique pour l'enseignement d'objets situés aux frontières des systèmes d'information. |
| Date: | 2026–05–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05794978 |
| By: | Xiaonan (Flora) Ma; Raluca Roman; Aditi Routh |
| Abstract: | Prohibiting payday lending can reduce complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by 90 percent. |
| Keywords: | Payday lending; Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; CFPB; Consumer financial regulation; Consumer complaints; Complaint resolution; Financial spillovers; Cross-market spillovers; Debt collection; credit reporting; Household finance; banking market structure |
| JEL: | G21 G28 G51 D14 D18 K23 |
| Date: | 2026–10–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedkrw:103924 |
| By: | Maryam Farboodi; Péter Kondor; Pablo Kurlat |
| Abstract: | We study equilibrium market structure in a model of credit-market competition with correlated or uncorrelated screening errors and endogenous screening technologies. A pool externality arises because rejected borrowers reapply elsewhere, so lenders’ screening and pricing choices affect competitors’ applicant pools. With independent errors, a single market segment emerges, with rates rising smoothly as lenders who choose better technologies lend to more adversely selected borrowers. With correlated screening errors, potentially stemming from similar AI systems and overlapping financial-sector data, ex-ante identical lenders instead specialize across qualitatively distinct segments, generating a hockey-stick interest-rate schedule: segments with uniform rates but heterogeneous borrower quality coexist with segments featuring uniform quality but dispersed rates, echoing traditional banking, fintech, and high-rate indiscriminate lending. We show how technological and regulatory changes affecting screening costs, including frontier AI innovation and various forms of open banking, unevenly affect financial access and can either benefit or harm financially excluded borrowers. |
| JEL: | D82 D83 G19 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35905 |
| By: | Payal Malik (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations); Nikita Jain; Bhargavee Das; Shiva Kanwar |
| Abstract: | Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is increasingly shaping the architecture through which governments deliver public services, with digital identity, interoperable payments, data-sharing frameworks and other common digital rails enabling services to operate at greater scale. This report examines whether and how DPI can represent a paradigmatic shift in public service delivery, moving beyond the digitisation of existing processes towards systems that are more accessible, inclusive, efficient and secure. The report uses a novel framework to analyse two quite different cases: Direct Benefit Transfer, a welfare programme that runs on top of India's foundational DPI, and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, a sectoral DPI built specifically for health. Each has been analysed alongside Australia’s experience. It considers the evolution of these systems, their institutional and technological architecture, and the opportunities and challenges that emerge as they operate at scale, with particular attentio to inclusion and last-mile access, efficiency and outcomes, security and resilience, and the role of public and private actors. |
| Keywords: | DPI, PDS, Ayushman Bharat, cybersecurity, Healthcare, India, Australia, icrier |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdc:report:26-r-24 |
| By: | Afrah Methlouthi (FSEG Sfax - Faculté des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion de Sfax - جامعة صفاقس - Université de Sfax - University of Sfax); Fatma Bouaziz (FSEG Sfax - Faculté des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion de Sfax - جامعة صفاقس - Université de Sfax - University of Sfax) |
| Abstract: | La falsification des diplômes constitue un défi majeur pour les établissements d'enseignement supérieur en raison des limites des méthodes traditionnelles de vérification. Ce papier analyse l'adoption de la Blockchain pour la gestion des diplômes numériques et ses déterminants organisationnels, en s'appuyant sur les cadres TOE et DOI. Il présente les résultats préliminaires d'une étude qualitative menée auprès de trois facultés publiques, montrant que le soutien de la direction, ainsi que les ressources financières et technologiques, influencent l'adoption de la Blockchain, le soutien de la direction jouant un rôle clé à toutes les phases du processus. Cette recherche contribue à combler une lacune de la littérature en analysant les facteurs organisationnels de l'adoption de la Blockchain dans l'enseignement supérieur. |
| Date: | 2026–05–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05789293 |
| By: | Nabila Jawadi (IPAG Business School); Khodor Shatila (IPAG Business School) |
| Abstract: | Le développement des services bancaires digitaux (DBS) a poussé les chercheurs à s'intéresser aux résultats post-adoption, en particulier la satisfaction des utilisateurs. Cette étude examine les principaux déterminants de la satisfaction des utilisateurs des DBS en intégrant le modèle d'acceptation de la technologie (TAM) et la théorie de la confirmation des attentes (ECT). Le modèle conceptuel proposé examine comment les facteurs technologiques, personnels et expérientiels, influencent conjointement la satisfaction. Les données ont été recueillies à partir d'une enquête menée auprès de 354 utilisateurs de DBS en France et seront analysées à l'aide des modèles d'équations structurelles. En proposant un cadre intégratif, cette recherche contribue à une compréhension plus holistique de la satisfaction à l'égard des DBS et fournit des leviers aux institutions bancaires pour améliorer les performances de leurs services digitaux. |
| Date: | 2026–05–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05794976 |
| By: | Donghwa Seo; Doohwi Cha; Seunghan Son; Juyeong Lee; Minsuk Sung; Minjae Lee |
| Abstract: | Crypto venues increasingly list perpetual futures on equities and other real-world assets (RWAs), which trade continuously yet reference dividend-paying stocks: a long equity perpetual marked to the ex-dividend cash price bears the ex-dividend drop without receiving the dividend. We ask whether the premium-index funding architecture these venues run -- funding set from the contemporaneous basis $e_t=P_t-S_t$ rather than a carry target -- can replicate shareholder cash flows for traders entering and exiting at arbitrary times. It cannot. Funding serves two roles that coincide for non-dividend crypto assets but split apart for equities: basis control and settlement. We give the fair-funding identity, cast timing fairness as an optimal-stopping condition, and characterize when the basis is a sufficient statistic for the fair target. The decisive obstruction is measure-theoretic: a predictable dividend is an atom, and no absolutely continuous funding path can replicate an atom over holding intervals even in the weak limit, so fairness must match the atom with an atom -- an event credit. Exchange-native data confirm this: at each covered ex-date one venue posts a discrete funding atom equal to $-D/(\mathrm{Mark}-D)$ while a standard premium-index venue posts none, transferring the dividend across venues -- from native funding alone, with no external spot. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.22839 |
| By: | Antonis Ballis; Christos Ioannidis |
| Abstract: | Weak-form efficiency implies symmetry restrictions on the Markov chain governing movement across the cryptocurrency capitalisation distribution. We test them on the full listed population: 8, 970 assets, 690 weekly cross-sections, 2013 to 2026, with entry, exit and survival observed rather than inferred. Symmetry is rejected in every era, but the asymmetry falls by seventy percent, and what converged is entry-driven compositional churn rather than coins' own valuations. The bottom decile earns 27.5% per week on paper and nothing among assets that trade, on capacity of $293, 000. Compensation for neglect exists precisely where trading does not. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.23283 |
| By: | Michelle W. Bowman |
| Date: | 2026–10–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgsq:103938 |