A lawsuit was filed in Federal Court today (link here to download) that charged the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System with failure to follow the legal requirements of the Durbin Amendment in their final rules. Among the plaintiffs are associations that represent retail and convenience stores, as well as individual retail entities. At the same time, the Department of Justice made public its plans to “keep an eye on” debit card fees – something that lawmarkers asked them to do this past October(read that article here).
The Dodd-Frank law said the Fed could consider the incremental costs of acquiring, clearing and settling each transaction and specifically prohibited any other expenses from being used to inflate those costs, according to NRF.
“Congress passed this law to cap swipe fees but the banks have turned a ceiling into a floor and raised fees dramatically higher for quick-service restaurants across the nation,” said Rob Green, executive director, NRF’s National Council of Chain Restaurant said. “This clearly was not the intent of Congress.”
The plaintiffs also allege that the Fed’s final rules discourage competition among debit card networks.
In September 2011, the NRF announced the formation of an organized advocacy campaign with one primary stated goal as that of “reducing swipe fees” among other initiatives around job creation and emerging technologies. Merchant will not be going quietly off into the night and even with the all-important holiday shopping season upon us, their focus on forcing change into to the payments industry remains constant.
Read article here : http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-mone…medium=twitter