Archives For interchange fees

New Report: Canadian Interchange Fee Caps Would Hurt Consumers

Kristian Stout —  15 November 2017

Canada’s large merchants have called on the government to impose price controls on interchange fees, claiming this would benefit not only merchants but also consumers. But experience elsewhere contradicts this claim.

In a recently released Macdonald Laurier Institute report, Julian Morris, Geoffrey A. Manne, Ian Lee, and Todd J. Zywicki detail how price controls on credit card interchange fees would result in reduced reward earnings and higher annual fees on credit cards, with adverse effects on consumers, many merchants and the economy as a whole.

This study draws on the experience with fee caps imposed in other jurisdictions, highlighting in particular the effects in Australia, where interchange fees were capped in 2003. There, the caps resulted in a significant decrease in the rewards earned per dollar spent and an increase in annual card fees. If similar restrictions were imposed in Canada, resulting in a 40 percent reduction in interchange fees, the authors of the report anticipate that:

  1. On average, each adult Canadian would be worse off to the tune of between $89 and $250 per year due to a loss of rewards and increase in annual card fees:
    1. For an individual or household earning $40,000, the net loss would be $66 to $187; and
    2. for an individual or household earning $90,000, the net loss would be $199 to $562.
  2. Spending at merchants in aggregate would decline by between $1.6 billion and $4.7 billion, resulting in a net loss to merchants of between $1.6 billion and $2.8 billion.
  3. GDP would fall by between 0.12 percent and 0.19 percent per year.
  4. Federal government revenue would fall by between 0.14 percent and 0.40 percent.

Moreover, tighter fee caps would “have a more dramatic negative effect on middle class households and the economy as a whole.”

You can read the full report here.

In Credit Cards, Financial Regulation, Truth on the Market , , , ,
permalink

New ICLE study finds the Durbin Amendment still harms poorer Americans and small businesses

Geoffrey Manne —  25 April 2017

Today, the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) released a study updating our 2014 analysis of the economic effects of the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act.

The new paper, Unreasonable and Disproportionate: How the Durbin Amendment Harms Poorer Americans and Small Businesses, by ICLE scholars, Todd J. Zywicki, Geoffrey A. Manne, and Julian Morris, can be found here; a Fact Sheet highlighting the paper’s key findings is available here.

Introduced as part of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, the Durbin Amendment sought to reduce the interchange fees assessed by large banks on debit card transactions. In the words of its primary sponsor, Sen. Richard Durbin, the Amendment aspired to help “every single Main Street business that accepts debit cards keep more of their money, which is a savings they can pass on to their consumers.”

Unfortunately, although the Durbin Amendment did generate benefits for big-box retailers, ICLE’s 2014 analysis found that it had actually harmed many other merchants and imposed substantial net costs on the majority of consumers, especially those from lower-income households.

In the current study, we analyze a welter of new evidence and arguments to assess whether time has ameliorated or exacerbated the Amendment’s effects. Our findings in this report expand upon and reinforce our findings from 2014:

Relative to the period before the Durbin Amendment, almost every segment of the interrelated retail, banking, and consumer finance markets has been made worse off as a result of the Amendment.

Predictably, the removal of billions of dollars in interchange fee revenue has led to the imposition of higher bank fees and reduced services for banking consumers.

In fact, millions of households, regardless of income level, have been adversely affected by the Durbin Amendment through higher overdraft fees, increased minimum balances, reduced access to free checking, higher ATM fees, and lost debit card rewards, among other things.

Nor is there any evidence that merchants have lowered prices for retail consumers; for many small-ticket items, in fact, prices have been driven up.

Contrary to Sen. Durbin’s promises, in other words, increased banking costs have not been offset by lower retail prices.

At the same time, although large merchants continue to reap a Durbin Amendment windfall, there remains no evidence that small merchants have realized any interchange cost savings — indeed, many have suffered cost increases.

And all of these effects fall hardest on the poor. Hundreds of thousands of low-income households have chosen (or been forced) to exit the banking system, with the result that they face higher costs, difficulty obtaining credit, and complications receiving and making payments — all without offset in the form of lower retail prices.

Finally, the 2017 study also details a new trend that was not apparent when we examined the data three years ago: Contrary to our findings then, the two-tier system of interchange fee regulation (which exempts issuing banks with under $10 billion in assets) no longer appears to be protecting smaller banks from the Durbin Amendment’s adverse effects.

This week the House begins consideration of the Amendment’s repeal as part of Rep. Hensarling’s CHOICE Act. Our study makes clear that the Durbin price-control experiment has proven a failure, and that repeal is, indeed, the only responsible option.

Click on the following links to read:

Full Paper

Fact Sheet

Summary

In Apple, Banking, Credit Cards, Financial Regulation, International Center for Law & Economics, Platforms, Regulation, Regulatory Reform , , , , , , ,
permalink

Politically-Mandated Credit Card Interchange Fees Won’t Create Jobs (But They Will Hurt Consumers and the Economy)

Geoffrey Manne —  20 March 2010

by Geoffrey A. Manne, Joshua D. Wright and Todd J. Zywicki

Cross-posted at Business in the Beltway (at Forbes.com) and The Volokh Conspiracy.

In a recent commentary at Forbes.com, former Clinton administration economist Robert Shapiro argues that some 250,000 jobs would be created, and consumers would save $27 billion annually, by reducing the interchange fee charged to merchants for transactions made by consumers using credit and debit cards.  If true, these are some incredible numbers.

But incredible is indeed the correct characterization for his calculations.  Shapiro’s claims, based on a recent study he co-authored, rest on tendentious accounting, questionable assumptions, and—most crucially—a misunderstanding of the economics of interchange fees.  Political price caps on interchange fees won’t help the economy or create jobs—but they will make consumers poorer.

First, Shapiro estimates the employment impact of a redistribution of fees using the same stimulus multiplier that the Obama administration uses to tout the effect of its stimulus package.  But it is completely inappropriate to simply “plug in” the multiplier for government stimulus to calculate the effect of a reduction of interchange fees —unless the interchange fees currently paid to banks somehow simply disappear from the economy, contributing nothing to job creation, lowering the cost of capital, or increasing access to credit.  Even assuming that some portion of the fees are pure profit for card issuers, those profits must be paid out to shareholders or employees, invested, or used to bolster bank balance sheets (which provides capital for lending).  So, unlike the stimulus, this is at best merely a politically-mandated wealth (and employment) redistribution from card issuers to merchants, and any calculation of apparent economic gain must be offset by a similar calculation of loss on the other side.  Having ignored this offset, Shapiro’s conclusions are completely untenable.

But Shapiro also misunderstands the economics of payment card networks and the role of the interchange fee within them.  For example, Shapiro estimates that 70% of merchant savings from reduced interchange fees would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower retail prices.  But that is pure speculation.  In Australia, where regulators imposed price controls on interchange in 2003, fees paid by merchants have fallen but consumers have seen no reduction in the prices that they pay.  And where merchants have been permitted to impose surcharges on credit users, the surcharge can, and often does, substantially exceed the interchange fee cost.  It is not for nothing that merchants have spent millions trying to push interchange fee regulation through Congress.

In addition, Shapiro suggests that interchange fees are excessive in light of the “transaction and processing costs of using credit and debit cards.”  But his estimation of these costs is dramatically off-base.  Not only does he appear to exclude the cost of the delay between the time merchants receive payment (almost immediately) and when consumers pay their bills (at the end of a billing cycle), he ignores what may be the most significant single cost of consumer credit operations (and corresponding benefit to merchants): the cost of credit loss. Continue Reading…

In Credit Cards, Federal Trade Commission, Financial Regulation, International Center for Law & Economics, Law & Economics , , , , , , , , ,
permalink

Interchange Fees Symposium E-Book

Geoffrey Manne —  21 February 2010

iclelogoOver at the International Center for Law and Economics website we’ve posted a link to a pdf e-book version of the collected content (including both posts and comments) from our recent “Interchange Fees and the Law and Economics of Credit Cards” symposium.  Head on over and download a copy if you’re interested in a dead tree version of the symposium.

In Announcements, Credit Cards, Financial Regulation, International Center for Law & Economics, Law & Economics, The Law & Economics of Interchange Fees Symposium , , , ,
permalink