Retail Payment Innovations and Cash Usage: Accounting for Attrition By Using Refreshment Samples

Abstract: Contactless credit cards and stored value cards are touted as a fast and convenient method of payment to replace cash at the point of sale. Cross-sectional approaches find a large effect of these retail payment innovations on cash usage (around 10%). Using a semiparametric panel model that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and general forms of attrition, we find no significant effect for contactless credit cards and only a 2% reduction in cash usage stemming from single-purpose stored value cards. These results point to the uneven pace of payment innovation diffusion.