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Card Hub: Interchange Fee Study

This study has been updated multiple times with new information as the Durbin Amendment made its way through Congress and ultimately took effect on October 1, 2011. On May 1, 2012 the Federal Reserve for the first time announced hard data on the law’s practical effect, and Card Hub’s 2012 Impact Study concluded that the law has ended up costing banks almost $8.4 billion on an annual basis ($8.06 billion for large banks and $329.4 million for small banks).
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Gas Retailers Gained a $1 Billion Subsidy from Durbin Amendment

New data finds that gas retailers are saving a $1 billion annually at the expense of consumers, thanks to the so-called “Durbin amendment,” a provision of the Dodd-Frank legislation which capped what retailers pay to accept debit cards beginning in October 2011.  According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, nearly 134 billion gallons of gas were sold in 2011, with approximately 48 billion gallons purchased using debit – the type of payment impacted by the Durbin amendment, which reduced interchange rates by about 70 percent for this category.
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Where’s the Debit Discount?

The research presented in this document sought to identify evidence that retail customers are not seeing any benefit from these price controls. This exercise compared identical baskets of goods before and after the October 1st implementation of the Durbin amendment, through a total of 84 shopping trips at 21 retail locations of four major national retail brands in six diverse U.S. cities. Our field research found no evidence of any savings being passed along to consumers in the form of lower prices as a result of the Durbin amendment price controls. Of the 21 retail locations studied, 16 locations – 76 percent – either raised prices or kept them the same before and after the Durbin amendment went into effect. Just five stores lowered their prices after October 1st. Overall, customers paid an average of 1.7 percent more for the same products after the Fed rule was implemented.
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Bloomberg Government Study: Business Impact of the Dodd-Frank Debit Fee Cap

The Federal Reserve’s debit interchange fee cap, which went into effect on Oct. 1, may cost the banking industry $8 billion annually. The top 10 U.S. banks say they intend to recoup about 50 percent of that lost revenue by driving customers to new products, growing their customer bases and removing reward programs. They may also add new fees, though most of the large banks have discarded plans to charge for debit card usage.
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