p kirkes
VIP Member
The big news for me today was the probable cap on debit card purchases, $50.00 to $100.00, the imposition of new monthly debit card fees, $3.00, the loss of free checking with an imposition of checking account monthly fee of $15.00.
A new law enacted last year, lowered the debit card transaction fee from 44 cents to 12 cents per transaction. The law left the implementation to the Federal Reserve Board.
This transaction fee is a 16 Billion dollar shift in money from merchants to banks, so faced with a substantial loss in revenue the banks are looking for ways to make it up. Some of the ways are stated above.
The lobbying is intense and the stakes are high it's Merchants Vs Banks.
How will this affect us? Cost of making purchases, not the purchase, will be more expensive. This may drive people to use cash, checks, ATM, and credit cards more.
Personally, I use my debit card for everything except paying monthly bills and out of town hotels.
I reviewed my debit card purchases for March (thus far) and find I used it 18 times. Two were for more than $50.00. I could have paid those by check.
I don't want to use cash as it has a bad habit of slipping through your fingers. Using the ATM for $20 - $60 a trip is inconvenient and leaves you extra cash that you didn't intend to spend, but will. Burdening my credit card statement with small purchases is also cumbersome. So it looks like the $3.00 fee will be better. Although I don't like it, at my present rate of usage that would be about .08 cents per swipe, the price of convenience I suppose.
The loss of free checking really irks me since I only make 10 checks per month, thats a $1.50 cost for each check.
What to do......consolidate, use one bank, one checking account, one debit card.
Regards,
A new law enacted last year, lowered the debit card transaction fee from 44 cents to 12 cents per transaction. The law left the implementation to the Federal Reserve Board.
This transaction fee is a 16 Billion dollar shift in money from merchants to banks, so faced with a substantial loss in revenue the banks are looking for ways to make it up. Some of the ways are stated above.
The lobbying is intense and the stakes are high it's Merchants Vs Banks.
How will this affect us? Cost of making purchases, not the purchase, will be more expensive. This may drive people to use cash, checks, ATM, and credit cards more.
Personally, I use my debit card for everything except paying monthly bills and out of town hotels.
I reviewed my debit card purchases for March (thus far) and find I used it 18 times. Two were for more than $50.00. I could have paid those by check.
I don't want to use cash as it has a bad habit of slipping through your fingers. Using the ATM for $20 - $60 a trip is inconvenient and leaves you extra cash that you didn't intend to spend, but will. Burdening my credit card statement with small purchases is also cumbersome. So it looks like the $3.00 fee will be better. Although I don't like it, at my present rate of usage that would be about .08 cents per swipe, the price of convenience I suppose.
The loss of free checking really irks me since I only make 10 checks per month, thats a $1.50 cost for each check.
What to do......consolidate, use one bank, one checking account, one debit card.
Regards,
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