Cutting the Debit (Card Fee)
Merchants win, banks loose and so will debit card users, I'm afraid. If you didn't know, currently banks charge merchants an average of 44 cents for each transaction. The Federal Reserve has proposed limiting this to twelve cents. 44 cents per swipe doesn't sound like much, does it? On the surface it sounds like that old story, "if I were to give you a penny today, and double what I've given you every day for a month, would you rather have that or a million dollars now?" According to the Fed, the banks and credit card companies earn $16 billion per year on them. That sounds like real money to me. Richard Durbin (D-IL) said that taxpayers helped banks "in their darkest hour." And were repaid by them using the $700 billion bailout to pay huge bonuses to their executives who got them into trouble in the first place. In response, banks say the decision does not take into consideration overhead costs, so they will have to raise other fees to make up the