WSJs Robin Sidel has a piece about the effect of the Durbin Amendment on the debit card interchange fees charged by credit unions and small banks. Or rather, the lack of a direct effect, as financial institutions with assets of less than $10 billion were unaffected by the regulation.
That is an interesting topic for a number of reasons and not least because when the exclusion of smaller financial institutions from the Durbin Amendments scope was first proposed, we heard quite a few uneasy voices from the under-$10 billion financial world.
That is the question Sen. Durbin the author of the eponymous amendment to last years sweeping financial reform bill that called for lower debit interchange fees is asking of Wells Fargos CEO. Well, Sen. Durbin is of course only asking Wells Fargo to answer for its own fees, but the fact is that what prompted Wells to begin charging new debit-related fees is also what caused its rivals to do the same.
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