Preferences for Cash vs. Digital Payments

Last registered on January 02, 2025

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Preferences for Cash vs. Digital Payments
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015066
Initial registration date
December 19, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 02, 2025, 10:04 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
IFPRI

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
IFPRI
PI Affiliation
IFPRI

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2024-11-18
End date
2024-12-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
In rural areas of low and middle-income countries cash is the dominant form of payments. By contrast, in high-income countries and in many urban areas around the world, payments are primarily—and, in some cases, almost exclusively—digital. Governments, companies, and international organizations all tend to agree that shifting existing cash payments to digital payments carries the potential to improve the lives of people living in rural areas of low-income countries, especially women (see, e.g., the Better Than Cash Alliance). In contexts where physical banking networks are limited and the use of traditional bank accounts, ATMs, and debit/credit cards is low, many view mobile money as a potential technology enabling a shift away from dependence on cash payments (Suri et al. 2021). In this project, we aim to study preferences for digital payments relative to cash payments by embedding an experiment at the end of a household survey in Bangladesh. The experiment involves randomizing, at the individual level, the amount and mode of appreciation payment distributed to our survey respondents after they complete our survey. Importantly, this payment takes place where both parties (i.e., the enumerator and the survey respondent) are physically in the same location, which removes the reduction in transaction costs associated with digital payments in previous studies. This design allows us to compare preferences for digital payments vs. cash payments while removing confounding variation in travel costs associated with digital payments.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ambler, Kate, Mehrab Bakhtiar and Jeffrey Bloem. 2025. "Preferences for Cash vs. Digital Payments." AEA RCT Registry. January 02. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15066-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We offer a choice between a payment of 200 Taka via cash or X via mobile money, with X= 200, 220, 250, 300, 350, and 400. This generates six groups, each representing varying wedges between the cash and digital payment (i.e., parity, 110%, 125%, 150%, 175%, and 200%). Parity represents our control group, with five treatment groups each representing increasing amounts offered via mobile money.
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2024-11-25
Intervention End Date
2024-12-13

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Our main outcome variable is a binary variable indicating if the respondent chooses to accept the payment digitally via mobile money.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We randomize individuals into one of five treatment groups or a control group. For each group, we offer a choice between a payment of 200 Taka via cash or X via mobile money, with X= 200, 220, 250, 300, 350, and 400. This generates six groups, each representing varying wedges between the cash and digital payment (i.e., parity, 110%, 125%, 150%, 175%, and 200%). Parity represents our control group, with five treatment groups each representing increasing amounts offered via mobile money. We stratify our randomization by gender and pre-existing mobile money account ownership (i.e., as measured in the midline survey) to ensure equal gender and mobile money account ownership distribution within each treatment group. Given a sample size of the survey in Bangladesh is roughly 1,700 people with a roughly equal number of men and women, we will have over 100 men and 100 women per treatment group.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in an office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
N/A
Sample size: planned number of observations
1,700
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1,700
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IFPRI IRB
IRB Approval Date
2024-11-22
IRB Approval Number
MTID-22-1269
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Preferences for Cash vs. Digital Payments: A Pre-Analysis Plan

MD5: 71088bf74253a8cb57148d96369082d7

SHA1: 5ac797fe0bdbd3fcc0cce5a881f5c9b694d2a7f6

Uploaded At: December 19, 2024

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials