The press coverage given over to the Durbin Amendment has helped to raise awareness of interchange fees to a sleepy segment of the merchant community – local businesses. As one such business attested in this article, she finally took the time to calculate what she was paying in interchange fees and promptly took action:
This summer, she posted a flyer highlighting those costs next to the cash register along with a request to pay cash, and saw immediate results. In the two months since the flyer was posted, cash payments rose by 6 percent, saving Country Folks hundreds of dollars in pesky merchant fees.
It’s hard to see this kind of strategy taking place in national merchant’s checkout lanes – can you imagine a checkout clerk asking you if you’d prefer to pay with cash? But if enough small merchants take the time to figure out their acceptance costs, pockets of cash usage increases (to the detriment of debit) may turn up in the market.
Read more: http://tdn.com/news/local/article_00072146-f2da-11e0-b6d5-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1aUdxw6ot