I do want to be clear, I'm not saying congress was wrong to make these changes.

But even if these changes are the most morally correct thing ever done by our government it is irrational to expect businesses to provide exactly the same services when they're being forced to change the terms of those services.

That said, personally I support much of the new fee regulation, the sunshine parts of the regulation, but I think the interchange fee regulations are misguided. They don't do much directly for the consumer and mostly just shift the money from one set of corporations to another.

My understanding is that the banks were overcharging the places that took Mastercard/Visa, etc. on the debit cards to begin with. With the legislation, they'll still make huge profits, but not as huge as before.

How much does it actually cost for a transaction? A penny or less?

If forced to, I would rather pay a yearly fee than have a cap on my card. I almost never have more than $10 in my pocket (and usually, it's no cash at all in my pocket) But more likely, and as pain in the arse as it would be, I would stick my money in whatever bank or credit union DOESN'T charge the fee.

First, there's the more philosophical question of whether it is possible for one side to overcharge the other for a service when both parties freely enter into the deal. There is no law requiring Target to accept Mastercard network debit or credit cards if they feel the terms of too burdensome (and that reason is a big part of why, for years, CostCo only accepted Discover, ARCO doesn't accept credit cards at their pumps, and many government programs and fees don't accept plastic of any sort).

But that was certainly the position of merchants that they were being overcharged. WalMart, years ago, won a lawsuit against Visa and Mastercard claiming they were colluding to keep interchange rates high.

And banks don't deny that. What they say is that with the profits they'll now be making it no longer supports the complete suite of products they have been offering for the last 15 years or so (we tend to forget just how recent the phenomenon of small scale POS card use is, remember when it seemed like technological excess that you could now buy your $2.99 value meal at McDonald's using a card?).

And again, the philosophical question of what is "too much" profit so long as it is legally obtained.

Probably less, in terms of the infrastructure. Probably more due to fraud losses and other secondary concerns. If you're capped at $0.12 per swipe, $0.11 of which is profit you have to have 909 fraud free swipes to counteract one dillweed who steals his ex-girlfriends debit card and buys $100 of booze.

And why don't you carry cash? You likely did 20 years ago. Because the fee structure created an environment that subsidized the creation of a system that allows you to use plastic almost everywhere you might want to spend money.

Personally, I doubt you'll see caps like those mentioned in the article (though you already have caps, most people just never run into them). Or if you do they'll be risk based caps or transferrence of risk (difficult to do due to regulation but does it make sense that the bank has all of the fraud risk if you leave tell your online boyfriend what your card numbers are so he can buy a ticket to visit you) from the bank to the consumer, all of which will still make

But the real key here is that Congress has not told banks "You can only make X% profit when one of your customers uses a piece of plastic to make a purchase." Instead they've said "You can only make X% profit when one of your customers uses a piece of plastic to make a purchase and the word Debit appears on it; you can still make all the profit you want off of them if they use a nearly identical piece of plastic but it says Credit on it."

Even the laziest of capitalists will respond to that by saying "oh, well then I'd really prefer that my customers use the credit card." And in reality, for someone who can handle their money, if caps really were imposed that would be the way to avoid it. Use a credit card everywhere you currently use a debit card and then go home at the end of the day/week/month and pay it off in full.

Wherein the government once again encourages people to get into debt.

And in case it wasn't obvious, MY post was sarcastic. I have no problem with companies making money, as long as it is not illegal, unethical, etc. Which is a whole other argument

I have always been curious though: you frequently hear of the transactional charges the banks, VISA, Mastercharge, et. al. charge the merchants, but isn't there an advantage to the merchant of getting the money into his account sooner, with FAR less handling, and with lower risk? If a merchant is (for example) on an all credit/debit card basis (no cash or checks), he does not have to worry about taking cash and checks to the bank (time cost of delivery cash/checks to the bank, security risk of having cash on site, paperwork and additional handling involved with depositing checks, etc.) and does not have to worry about the risk of a bad check (I have virtually nil experience in retail, but I believe that the merchant is fully at risk for a bogus check - please correct me if I am wrong). While he does have to pay fees for the transaction, it is not as if the merchant is getting nothing in return for those fees: there are hard and soft-cost savings and advantages to the merchant for accepting plastic.

(BTW: I know that in reality a brick and mortar merchant cannot be all plastic.)

Is the government responsible for protecting people from their own stupidity?

One other thing: I know there are different costs for a merchant processing a credit charge vs. a debit charge (I believe one has higher fixed costs with lower percentage or something like that). However, I have a service station near me that offers a cash discount that the last time I looked was in the neighborhood of 14 cents per gallon.

What strikes me is that they will give you the "cash" discount if you use your debit card.

The Shell station at 405 and Brookhurst used to do that. Now gas is 10cents less if you purchase a car wash starting at $6.99.

The ARCO by my place accepts Visa, MC and Discover (I think) with no fees. Same with the ARCO on Ball across from DL.

Question on the getting rid of free checking accounts and such. If I already have a "free" account at Bank X - can they just one day start charging for it?

Kevy: No, but they are responsible, to some extent, for the economy. And since we accept as fact that there are a large number of stupid people in this country, large enough to affect the economy should they all go down at once in a big credit mess, then they would be wise to avoid policies that shove people in the direction of bad debt acquisition.

The "cash discount" at gas stations ticks me off because it's a total end-around the law. In the late 80s they made it illegal to charge a fee for a credit card transaction. All the "cash discount it" is a rebranding of the old "credit charge". It's functionally identical. If I recall correctly, some gas stations even tried it at the time the law passed and they were made to stop. I guess it's been long enough that no one remembers.