D.C. Circuit Rejects Merchant Challenge To Higher Cap On Debit Card Transaction Fees

Payment Systems Dodd-Frank Federal Reserve Debit Cards

On March 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the Federal Reserve Board's final rule imposing a 21-cent per transaction limit on debit card interchange fees (up from a 12-cent per transaction limit in its proposed rule) was based on a reasonable construction of a “poorly drafted” provision of the Dodd-Frank Act and that the Board acted reasonably in issuing a final rule requiring debit card issuers to process debit card transactions on at least two unaffiliated networks. NACS v. Bd. of Governors of the Fed. Reserve Sys., No. 13-5270, 2014 WL 1099633 (D.C. Cir. Mar. 21, 2014). The action was brought by a group of merchants challenging the increase to the interchange fee cap and implementation of anti-exclusivity rule for processing debit transactions that was less restrictive than other options. In support of their challenge, the merchants argued that in setting the cap at 21 cents the Board ignored Dodd-Frank’s command against consideration of “other costs incurred by an issuer which are not specific to a particular electronic debit transaction.” The court held, in a decision that hinged on discerning statutory intent from the omission of a comma, that when setting the fee cap the Board could consider both the incremental costs associated with the authorization, clearance, and settlement of debit card transactions (ACS costs) and other, additional, non-ACS costs associated with a particular transaction (such as software and equipment). The court further concluded that the Board could consider all ACS costs, network processing fees, and fraud losses. The court, however, remanded the question of whether the Board could also consider transaction-monitoring costs when setting the fee cap, given that monitoring costs are already accounted for in another portion of the statute. Finally, the court rejected the merchants’ argument that the Board’s final rule should have required the card issuers to allow their cards to be processed on at least two unaffiliated networks per method of authentication (i.e., PIN authentication or signature authentication) holding that the statute goes no further than preventing card issuers or networks from requiring the exclusive use of a particular network.