The research aims to help merchant acquiring institutions gain a better insight on what merchant establishments in the Singapore market perceive of the costs they incur due to credit card acceptance. The research attempts to study the Singapore market and establish if increased credit card usage does increase costs for the merchant establishments that accept credit cards, this will help to acquire institutions in Singapore have a better understanding of merchant perceptions and what drives or deters credit card acceptance in the Singapore market. The survey was based on an interview of merchant establishments and the views of the merchants and was not based on their financial data. As a first step, the variables used in the survey were tested for interdependence using Chi-square tests; subsequently data reduction using factor analysis was performed and finally linear regression to establish a relation between dependent and independent variables. Merchant establishment believe accepting credit cards and increasing volume is costlier compared to another form of payment, but have mixed awareness about interchange fee. It also indicated that interchange fee and cardholder benefits are independent of the merchant establishments. The study only broadly attempts to gauge merchants view if increased credit card usage has increased costs for them.

1. Introduction
  1.1. The Basics of a Credit Card Payment System
  1.2. Recent Trends in Credit Card Take up in Singapore
 2. Research Problem
  2.1. Research Objective
  2.2. Research Hypothesis
  2.3. Scope of Research
 3. Review of Literature
  3.1. Costs incurred by Merchant Establishment:
  3.2. Merchant Discount/fees charged by acquirer:
  3.3. Price Discrimination:
  3.4. Benefits Realized by Cardholders:
  3.5. Interchange Fees set by Associations:
 4. Research Methodology
  4.1. The Research Framework:
  4.2. Sources of Data
  4.3. Statistical Techniques or Tools
 5. Discussion, Analysis, and Findings
  5.1. Survey Background & first level data analysis / insights:
  5.2. Result: Hypothesis Testing
  5.3. Result: Factor Analysis
  5.4. Result: Regression Analysis
  5.5. Summary of Findings
 6. Limitations and Conclusions
 References

• A. Seetharaman(Dean of Academic Affairs, S P Jain School of Global Management Singapore)
• Nitin Patwa(Assistant Professor. S P Jain School of Global Management Dubai) Corresponding Author
• Indu Niranjan(Dean of GMBA Program, S P Jain School of Global Management Singapore)
• Srinivas Phani Kavuri(Director of Academic Services, S P Jain School of Global Management Sydney)