Debit Cards

Small debit card issuers are bracing for an eventual loss of 73% of their interchange revenues despite being exempt from pending interchange regulations under the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law’s so-called Durbin Amendment. That’s one of the more notable findings from the Pulse electronic funds transfer network’s 2011 Debit Issuer Study released …

The freeze in U.S. bank card interchange rates, confirmed Wednesday by Visa Inc. for its network and last week by MasterCard Inc., is obviously good news for merchants and not-so-great news for credit and debit card issuers. But, somewhat surprisingly, it may not be all that welcome by merchant acquirers …

MasterCard Inc.’s new interchange schedule is out, and it contains no changes in consumer debit card rates or the transaction volume thresholds that many rates require. Normally, no change means no news, but in the highly charged world of interchange, anything the payment card networks do or don’t do is …

U.S. debit card holders received cash back on just over 1 billion point-of-sale purchases in 2009, according to new figures from the Federal Reserve. That statistical nugget and others in the Fed’s 2010 Payments Study help to explain why ATM operators are struggling to keep transaction volumes up. The Fed …

Overwhelmed by the volume of comments it received, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on Tuesday said in letters to Congress the Fed would miss Congress’s April 21 deadline to have issued final debit card interchange and network regulations. Bernanke, however, said the Fed still plans to meet the …

As debit card issuers move to impose new fees or trim back rewards in response to looming federal restrictions on interchange income, they may be ignoring an opportunity to recover as much as half of that interchange without levying a single new fee. That’s according to research released this week …

Consumers have few expectations that they’ll benefit from pending debit card interchange price regulations, according to new survey findings from Javelin Strategy and Research. And, with consumers used to free checking and debit cards, banks will need to move carefully if they want to impose new fees to make up …

The Durbin Amendment, which passed into law within weeks of its introduction in Congress last summer and seemed poised to go into effect in July, hit a stumbling block on Tuesday with the introduction of a bill in the U.S. Senate to delay rulemaking by two years. The legislation, called …

Big debit card issuer TCF Financial Corp. might need to lay off more than 2,000 employees to offset potential revenue losses if the Federal Reserve Board’s most draconian debit interchange price-control proposal takes effect, TCF said in recent court filings. Wayzata, Minn.-based TCF also said that its annual revenue loss …

There may be some good news for large banks and card networks fretting over the looming effective date for the Durbin Amendment and its restrictions on debit card income. While the amendment, part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation signed into law last summer, will severely compress debit card …