Consumer Awareness and the Use of Payment Media: Evidence from Young Finnish Consumers

Abstract

We provide evidence that increasing consumer awareness may have been underlying the rise of debit card use. We find that consumers typically use multiple payment media and that this behavior is closely related to the use of debit cards besides cash. Moreover, it turns out that the use of multiple payment media is directly related to consumer awareness but that not controlling for the endogeneity of awareness can bias its effect downwards. Conditional on the use of multiple payment methods, however, awareness does not distinguish those making debit a primary payment method from those making it secondary to cash.