Quote:
Originally Posted by sperbonzo
Everyone in the card industry knew that this would happen when Dick Durban wrote this bill. Every time the government gets involved like this it almost always turns out badly. Price fixing always results in either higher prices elsewhere in the chain, or reduction in service, supply and choices. it happens every time, but politicians just can't stop themselves from trying to get re-elected by appearing that they are "controlling prices", instead of letting people's freedom of choice take care of it instead.
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The processing networks, to some extent, are natural monopolies and hence need to be regulated - merchants don't really have any choice. The price controls is on the network side. Banks are still free to charge whatever they want for banking services, such as for example, BoA new $5 debit card fee.
There are many examples of price controls that help protect customers, such as those on gas, electric, and water service in most places...
And while on the topic of price controls - Comcast internet users should be thankful the government stepped in with temporary price controls when Comcast merged with Universal and required them to keep internet service rates about the same as now and not reduce the 250 GB/mo cap for at least three years.
Getting back to the debit card fee limit bill - from my understanding, smaller card issuers are exempt from the new limits, as well as, issuers of government benefit debit cards (unemployment, welfare, etc).
Ron