Payment Risk and Bank Lending
Fisher College of Business Working Paper No. 2021-03-017
Charles A. Dice Center Working Paper No. 2021-17
60 Pages Posted: 8 Nov 2021 Last revised: 5 Jan 2022
Date Written: December 18, 2021
Abstract
Deposits finance bank lending and serve as means of payment for bank customers. Under uncertain payment flows, deposits are debts with random maturities. Payment outflows drain reserves, and the risk is most prominent when funding markets are under stress and banks are unable to smooth out payment shocks. We provide the first evidence on the negative impact of payment risk on bank lending, bridging the literatures on payment systems and credit supply. An interquartile increase in payment risk is associated with a decline in loan growth rate that is 10% of standard deviation. Our findings are stronger in times of funding stress and robust across banks of different sizes and loans of long and short maturities. Banks with higher payment risk raise deposit rates to expand customer base and internalize payment flows. Finally, we show that payment risk dampens the bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission.
Keywords: Credit supply, deposits, payment, inside money, monetary policy transmission
JEL Classification: E42, E43, E44, E51, E52, G21, G28
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation