Capping interchange fees on payment cards would benefit cash and card users, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

The working paper, published this month, says that in the US these fees typically amount to 2–3% of the value of each transaction.

The authors – Robert Hunt, Konstantinos Serfes, and Yin Zhang – say the fees “have been controversial for half a century, ever since payment card networks began to dominate purchases at the point of sale”. Merchants, they say