Well, it's back to the days when banks used to charge to have a debit card...you see, banks gave u that debit card free because in the past they were allowed to charge merchants a fee...but in July banks will be limited to about a 12 cent fee...about 1/3rd of what they r charging merchants now...that fee reduction due to the passsage of Frank/Dodd bill...looks like banks will now charge their customers more fees for a debit card and limit the number of times one can use them in a month...hmmm...get this...there is no reduction in merchant's fee for credit card customers...new debit card fees will be an incentive for people to use credit cards...

another failed attempt at regulation...

http://money.msn.com/saving-money-tips/post.aspx?post=2423db85-ac01-46e3-802c-6446304687a1

isn't this the reason that our banks encourage us to use our debit cards as credit instead? i know i get rewards back...

they are processed through as a visa/mastercard and the fees are the same. this is why walmart started having the PIN screen come up automatically, so that people would think they SHOULD use it and save walmart the fee from processing as a credit card.

Yes. They charge vendors a higher fee for credit card charges than for debit card charges.I looked for some reference to the Frank-Dodd bill. Was it in that little video that didn't watch?I quickly perused this summary of the bill and found no reference to anything that would have to do with vendor fees. I read it over pretty fast. Perhaps I skipped over it.

yes...

"Do you operate a retail establishment? You can save bundles on processing costs by accepting debit cards with the addition of a PIN Pad.

"Processing debit/check cards as a regular credit card transaction can mean paying twice the amount for processing. By using a PIN pad for debit transactions you only pay a per transaction fee (between $0.35 and $0.55), no discount rate of any kind. Also, it should be noted that in order to ONLY incur a per transaction fee the customer MUST input their 4-digit PIN number into the PIN pad or your processing terminal (if the unit has an internal PIN pad). If the customer doesn't enter their PIN number, the typical per transaction and discount rate will be charged to those using debit cards with Visa or MasterCard logos on them (also called check cards)."

http://www.merchantseek.com/debitcard.htm

from the source...

The financial reform law passed last year says the fee is supposed to reflect the banks' actual costs.