New Hampshire merchants have a problem when it comes to interchange fee regulation – there are no regulated banks in their state. Solution? Create a new interchange fee cap that would affect some banks in the state, but not all, and regulate credit and debit card transactions. If New Hampshire merchants don’t know what a card is going to cost them now, this should clear things up.
“House Bill 1319 includes three parts: a federal cap on big national banks, a state cap for smaller banks, and no cap for small, federally chartered banks. The state cap would affect 18 state-chartered bans, while six smaller banks would be exempt from the cap.
The Durbin Amendment caps debit card interchange fees at roughly 21 cents on financial institutions with $10 billion or more in assets. However, all banks in New Hampshire have assets of less than $2 billion. As a result, New Hampshire’s merchants are finding no benefit from the new federal fee caps, according to the news source.
New Hampshire State Rep. John Hikel, the bill’s sponsor and a small business owner, said existing card fees are unpredictable and “as a merchant, you don’t know what the card is going to cost you.”
