On June 14, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) introduced H.R. 5465, a bill that aims to repeal the Durbin Amendment (Section 1075 of the Dodd-Frank Act). The Durbin Amendment required the Federal Reserve to limit the interchange fee that a card issuer could collect from merchants for debit card transactions.
Under the rule implemented by the Fed in June 2011, the maximum interchange fee that a card issuer could receive was set at 21 cents per transaction and 5 basis points multiplied by the value of the transaction. Not surprisingly, with the drop of multibillion-dollar annual revenues for card issuers, the Durbin Amendment has been popular with retailers and merchants but not so much so with debit card issuers.
