The Durbin Amendment pertains to all debit transactions (PIN, signature, and offline) and caps the interchange rate paid to regulated or non-exempt issuers. When this happened, the goal was to lower the merchant’s net fees paid for debit card transactions. The Federal Reserve ruled that debit interchange fees would be capped at 12 cents plus 0.05% of the transaction, with the possibility of an additional cent if certain criteria are met. Each debit card should be able to be processed on at least two independent networks. These new caps came into effect October 1, 2011.
