Exemption for Small Debit Card Issuers from Interchange Fee Standards Working as Intended

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Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

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May 28, 2013

On Thursday, May 23, 2013, the Federal Reserve Board reported that the exemption designed to protect small debit card issuers from interchange fee standards applied to large issuers is working as intended. Small depository institutions with consolidated assets of less than $10 billion, which are exempt from the interchange fee standard in Regulation II, received fee revenue of 43 cents per transaction in 2012. This amount is roughly the same as the average per-transaction fee received by exempt issuers before Regulation II took effect. In addition, most small issuers that responded to a survey about the effect of the network exclusivity provisions of the rule indicated that significant compliance costs were not incurred.