Using a novel dataset for the five major cities in Colombia, this paper studies the factors that determine access, usage and acceptance of different payment instruments. It shows that, as may be the case in many emerging economies, the use of electronic payments for day-to-day purchases is low, even with adequate access to transactional financial products and services. This result is largely explained by the costs and the limited levels of acceptance by merchants. Other factors such as income, financial education, trust and informality are also important deterrents to the adoption and usage of electronic payments.
