As the October 1st deadline draws near, Visa and MasterCard are beginning to issue interchange fee schedules to their member organizations. Since the official rates will not be published until October 1st, speculation will continue, but early indications are that (at least in the near term) it appears that a clear line will be drawn between the two groups of issuers.
However, it will be up to the acquirers and their processors to make sure that interchange fee qualification programs are updated to reflect these new schedules. The other side of this equation will be merchant routing and ultimately, the importance of the final debit interchange fee structure may be diluted against the impact that merchant routing could have on issuer costs.
“Earlier last week, MasterCard participated in a CUNA call with credit unions and reiterated its pledge to implement a two-tiered debit interchange fee structure, and added the company currently plans to keep its existing market-based rate structure in place for credit unions and other financial institutions with under $10 billion in assets.
Visa appears also to have created a two-tiered system, although some changes have been made to the Visa rates.”
