Durbin Amendment – A Review: The Durbin Amendment is an addendum to the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed by Congress in 2010. Its namesake, Senator Richard Durbin from Illinois, wrote the Durbin Amendment to grow Federal Reserve powers for setting interchange fees in debit card transaction processing. With Federal Reserve setting the interchange charges, the final objective will be to spur economic progress with reduced charges. This would likely indicate that retailers can potentially lower the prices on their products/ services, as they save money on interchange fees; and this sort of more affordable prices would possibly help a rise in customer spending.
As per the Durbin Amendment, the interchange fee for debit card transactions will be prescribed a maximum. Up until the passage of the Durbin Amendment, the normal charge that financial institutions were charging retailers/ merchants/ business people for each and every transaction was 44 cents. According to the Federal Reserve, banks obtained nearly $16 billion per year on these costs to pay for fraud elimination, administrative and transactional costs. However, starting October 2011, when the Durbin Amendment goes into effect, the charge is going to be limited to 12 cents plus 0.05% of the transaction, together with the chance of yet another cent if certain criteria are met.
This could be excellent news for retailers as this would create a reduction in the quantity of bank fees. However, banks and credit unions are against the amendment, because debit card swipe fees mostly amass to the financial institution that issued the debit card. Card issuing banks typically absorb about 1.3% of each dollar that you spend on your debit card, as a fee from the business owner. This amounts to nearly $3 billion yearly of very high profit margin revenue for Bank of America, as an example, a number which seems to fall by around 80% except in cases where Congress, the Department of Justice, or the Federal Reserve intervenes. Consequently, financial institutions will be looking for alternatives to make up for the revenue loss by billing consumers some form of a fee, just like the monthly fee that Bank of America is charging their clientele for using their debit cards. Because of this, customers could end up paying the price, literally and figuratively, for the lost revenue. The Durbin Amendment has stimulated severe controversy.
Additional Provisions in the Durbin Amendment: The Durbin Amendment is pertinent to simply those banks that have less than $10 billion in assets. Retailers can pick the debit network service they wish to process the transactions. Until the passage of the new law, retailers could only use the STAR network to process Visa transactions, whether or not it meant that other networks like PULSE and NYCE charged cheaper. Retailers/ merchants/ business owners can provide discounts to those clients who pay for products and solutions with a debit card or perhaps in cash. Merchant agreements for both Visa and MasterCard at the moment ban this practice to support credit card usage. Merchants can apply a minimum of $10 on credit card transactions. This minimum amount can be adjusted by the Fed as they see fit. Previously, Visa and MasterCard banned this kind of practice in their merchant contracts.
Problems with the Durbin Amendment: Banks may choose to increase incentives such as rebates and reward points to draw in clients to spend more with credit cards. Customers may see an advantage to using credit cards versus a debit card to earn the incentives. If the Durbin Amendment offers banking institutions the authority to impose a minimum amount on debit card transactions, there’s no stopping for banking institutions to choose to cap debit card purchases at $100, restraining higher price purchases. Rather, consumers will be compelled to make use of a credit card, prepaid debit card or cash. Smaller banking institutions which are not directly affected by the Durbin Amendment could end up enduring revenue losses. Market forces might require the smaller banks to reduce rates to remain competitive. Banks may transfer the fee to customers to offset their revenue losses by adjusting the terms for free checking accounts.
How the Durbin Amendment Has an effect on Small Enterprises: Whilst the Durbin Amendment seeks to boost business activities, the passage of this new law will affect small businesses in a number of ways as the following. Most small enterprises pay more to provide discounts than for debit interchange fees. This simply leaves most business owners at the mercy of a pricing strategy. A tiered pricing system with a merchant service provider could cost more. Small firms would eventually understand almost no genuine savings proposed by the Durbin Amendment. For example, merchant services may have a coded system which includes other fees such as down-grades and hidden mark-ups. In essence, small companies may well not see any savings initially because of blended contract agreements. The net effect is that consumers who purchase from these businesses will not see any savings. Small companies that currently don’t accept debit card payments would not see any savings. If banks increase banking fees, they might include small business checking accounts. Practically 15 million smaller businesses have active checking accounts. It is estimated that small enterprises could pay as much as $4.8 billion in higher fees during the 2 yrs after the Durbin Amendment is implemented. Many small companies must assess their debit card transactions. This might help to detect whether savings is possible with their current provider, or if switching to one with lower fees is worth it. What works for one small enterprise may well not benefit another based on the payment card consumers use.
Conclusion: The Durbin Amendment was passed to increase economic activity among buyers and small enterprises. The interchange fees charged by the Federal Reserve could increase the cost than savings to both groups. Market competition may push banks to shift the lost revenue onto small business owners and people. Competition will drive banking institutions and credit unions to shift the loss of debit card interchange fee revenue to checking account holders in the form of higher fees and decreased services. Certainly, these banking institutions and credit unions aren’t going to ignore an enormous revenue loss.
Consumers could get some of the money back if retailers reduced prices at the point of sale (POS). However the economic facts demonstrates that retailers would not lower prices much in the near term because the financial savings only amount to less than 2 cents on a $10 item. While in the long run, large merchants in several categories would pass on only a element of their cost savings. Small businesses could get some compensation for the losses enforced through predictable modifications to the costs and services of their checking accounts and debit cards if they accept debit cards and if their merchant processors lower their fees. But most small enterprises do not accept atm cards, and those that do are not likely to see the debit card fee reductions quickly or completely. Thus small enterprises will lose.
There is just one affected group that can be confident of accomplishing well under the Federal Reserve’s proposal. The large business owners on interchange-plus pricing from their merchant processors could end up with windfalls of between $17 and $20 billion in the first Two years after the recommended regulations go into effect, even after accounting for plausible amounts of reductions in prices to consumers. Larger corporations may gain advantage more from the lowered interchange fees and have more overall flexibility to pass those savings onto clients. However, the law allows small businesses to select its merchant service for transactions. This provides more options in providing a merchant service provider with affordable fees.
A big key here is that it still fails the small enterprise to make sure that they are conserving money with the new legislation. Check when you call your present credit card merchant account provider or the one you are looking at signing with, that they are aware about Durbin Amendment and have altered their pricing to pass on these savings. If the rep can not discuss how they have fine-tuned their prices, or worse seems perplexed as to what the Durbin Amendment is, then it likely means you should find a different merchant service provider to work with.