Let’s call this interchange week. With efforts to bring the Credit Card Fair Fee Act to vote in Congress picking up steam, I’m going to do a few postings on different aspects of the interchange debate this week. Coinciding with this, the printer proof of my recent article on the economics and origins of interchange is available on SSRN (spoiler: interchange and merchant restraints are less about network effects than about evading TILA, usury laws, and branch banking restrictions).
So as a primer for the rest of my posts, who’s up for some good ol’ fashion credit card network economics?