Federal Reserve Releases Interchange Fee Comparison Results

Federal Reserve Debit Cards

On May 1, the Federal Reserve Board released a comparison of interchange fees by payment network for 2011. The Federal Reserve Board plans to publish this information annually to assists card issuers and merchants in choosing payment card networks. The results, which also are expected to assist policymakers in evaluating the impact of the interchange fee regulations that took effect in October 2011, show each network provider’s average fee per transaction and the portion of each transaction value attributable to the fee. On an aggregate level, the average interchange fee declined substantially for non-exempt issuers from 43 cents to 24 cents following implementation of the regulation. For exempt issuers, the average fee remained at 43 cents.