The extent to which merchants pass along savings on interchange to consumers in the form of price reductions or other benefits proved to be a central issue on this panel, along with the distinction between regulatory goals and competition perspective on interchange fees. Mateus focused on the waterbed effect and concluded that consumers would end up paying more money in many European countries as the higher fees charged by banks would not be counterbalanced by price reductions from merchants. Verdier noted that there was too much emphasis on price effects and concentrated on the impact on non-price dimensions of competition such as fraud risk and improvements in quality. Maier-Rigaud examined the different methods of regulating interchange fees in the context of the Commission’s case against MasterCard.
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Abel M Mateus is Professor of Economics at New University of Lisbon and Senior Fellow at University College of London, with a broad experience in competition economics, central banking and development economics as well as in European Union affairs. Read More
Marianne Verdier is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University Paris Ouest Nanterre and a researcher at EconomiX. She has published in various academic journals about payment systems, such as International Journal of Industrial Organization, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Economic Surveys, and Communications & Strategies. Read More
Frank Maier-Rigaud is a senior economist in the Competition Division of the OECD. Prior to joining the OECD in 2010, he worked seven years as a senior economist in the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission. Read More
