Why Is The U.S. Lagging In Adopting Mobile Payments? — Pengfei Han and Zhu Wang

The U.S. is considered a global leader in payment services. Yet, the U.S. appears to lag some developing countries in adopting the latest mobile payment innovations. We show that previous card payment leaders such as the U.S. naturally tend to fall behind in mobile payment adoption. This can be explained by optimal choices of card payment users in such countries because the incremental improvement introduced by the current mobile payment technology does not justify the costs for them to switch....econintersect
Why Is The U.S. Lagging In Adopting Mobile Payments?
Pengfei Han, assistant professor of finance at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, and Zhu Wang, vice president for research in financial and payments systems in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Originally at FRB-Richmond

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To Sum Up

Central banks can support the development of digital currencies indirectly, by supporting the public provision of safe, privately issued digital currencies, or more directly, by issuing digital currencies themselves, among other possibilities. These approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive, especially if there are separate reasons to issue a CBDC. In that case, central banks may need to think about how private sector entities could use the CBDC to support the development of their own stablecoins.

Of course, central banks need not be averse to creating a CBDC that could revolutionize payments. It could empower central banks to better serve the financial system and the public more broadly, including through partnerships with the private sector. Nevertheless, these changes can carry risk and should be considered thoughtfully.

FRBNY — Liberty Street Economics
Central Banks and Digital Currencies

Tobias Adrian, financial counsellor and director of the International Monetary Fund’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department; Michael Lee is an economist in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group; Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli is a deputy division chief in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department at the International Monetary Fund; Antoine Martin is a senior vice president in the Bank’s Research and Statistics Group.