Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Benefits of the Durbin amendment for merchant services

As most of people would be aware with the fact that the Durbin amendment gave federal govt control to set debit card interexchange card rates which were previously decided by Master Card and Visa. The new rules would be impacting around 70% of debit card sales volume as the interchange fees was slashed by over 70%. Though the Durbin amendment has been mix bag till now but it has a large potential and if tapped correctly, it can increase revenues of your merchant program many fold. You can reap rich benefits if your provider is among top rated providers and can tell you everything which would help you to reap benefit of the Durbin amendment.
Top rated merchant terminal providers know that $50 transaction which invited charge of $.68 earlier as interchange exchange fees would be brought down to $.24 after implementation of the Durbin amendment. Thus, if you are aware of this fact and are willing to make certain changes to your merchant program, you can get increased savings. It is important to talk to your existing customers too and let them know that the Durbin amendment can help them to reduce their processing costs and thus can benefit their consumers too.
Those merchants, who are willing to pass on interchange fees reduction to their customers, will see their benefits. The best part is that merchants won’t see any reduction in net sales unless you or your competitor decides to pass on benefits to your customers. But you should know that if your terminal is from a big bank which is having $10 billion or more in assets, only then you can enjoy the Durbin amendment. Smaller banks having less than $10 billion are exempted from this amendment and they can continue charging old rates from you.
As you can imagine, there are many unethical people out there that are trying to tap into the savings your merchants will automatically see because of the Durbin amendment. That's why you should talk to your merchants and make sure they know they're dealing with a bank that provides top rated merchant services.
If you have not done so already, examine your client base so you can determine which merchants will benefit the most from the new debit interchange rates. Showing your merchants that you're making the Durbin amendment work specifically for them will greatly increase their loyalty, and may even bring in new business from competitors who aren't taking such proactive steps.

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