Industry groups have been busy examining the impact of the Durbin Amendment on consumer pricing in these very early stages of its presence in the market and, no surprise, haven’t found any examples of retailers passing interchange fee savings on to consumers. This article speaks to 7-Eleven and tends to suggest that the price of a Slurpee should have been reduced by now (by $0.21?), but perhaps that’s too literal a translation for such a complex market.
For example, 7-Eleven has been at the center of providing self-service kiosks in their stores to offer shared-branch services and surcharge free ATM access for credit unions around the country for many years. Consumers have certainly benefitted from that (along with the financial institutions), but more recently, they signed a new deal with Alliance Data to drive stored-value and loyalty programs. It would make sense then, that some of the missing Durbin dollars might be funneled into these programs, thus offering more value to consumers who frequent their stores.
The price of Slurpees has stubbornly remained the same despite new limits on debit card interchange, according to a survey by a payments-industry lobbying group.