Debit Card Interchange Fee Regulation: Some Assessments and Considerations

The debit card interchange fee regulation introduced by the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act went into effect in October 2011. The regulation limits the maximum permissible interchange fee that a covered issuer can collect from merchants for a debit card transaction. In this article, we review the regulation's first-year impact on different players in the debit card market. We also discuss how the regulation may affect payments efficiency.