MOBILE WALLETS AND CONSUMER SPENDING IN SINGAPORE: AGARWAL et al. REVISITED
Agarwal et al. ( 2019 ). Mobile wallet and entrepreneurial growth. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109, 48–53 analyze the impact of the introduction of quick response (QR) codes for mobile payments in Singapore. They find that this not only resulted in a significant increase in the use of mobile wallets, but that there was also a positive spillover effect on debit and credit card payments — in particular at small and new businesses. This note argues that the increase in card sales cannot have been driven by the QR code technology. I also proffer an alternative explanation, namely, that Agarwal et al. simply capture the concurrent increase in popularity of contactless cards.
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