Jeffrey Green

Senators want to know more about debit card fees. Is it politicking, or are current disclosure rules inadequate?

The demand is up in North America for new payment terminals. And the relatively smaller terminal makers in the region are among the chief beneficiaries, the results of a recent survey by Credit Card Management sister publication ATM&Debit News suggest.

The card associations have just finished a round of tit-for-tat that lowers signature-based debit interchange rates for big merchants but raises them for small retailers.

Millions of redesigned debit cards will be issued as a result of the Visa/MasterCard settlements with retailers, but card executives expect few problems or major new expenses.

First Data Corp., which owns the majority of the NYCE electronic funds transfer network, and Concord EFS Inc., which owns the Star network, are not the only processors using EFT networks to propel growth. Fifth Third Processing Solutions, a division of Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp, is developing a strategy to grow its Jeanie network, while Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv Inc. is working to consolidate its four networks to reduce members' gateway costs.

Signature-based debit card growth rates have made an unexpected upturn while growth in PIN-based transactions has dropped considerably. Both situations can have major implications for the rapidly changing point-of-sale debit scene.

Visa USA for years forced merchants to accept its Visa check card, only to back down from its "honor-all-cards" policy when it settled in May the merchant class-action lawsuit led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Now the organization is trying to force financial institutions to keep issuing its signature-based, or offline, debit card called the Visa check card. But this time Visa faces an antitrust challenge from offline debit card issuers and possibly from government enforcers.

For bank ATM owners, the fee that's seeing the biggest increase is the one assessed to cardholders for using another bank's machine.

After several years of growth rates in the 4% to 5% range, North American point-of-sale terminal makers experienced a total increase of 12% last year. What's the long-term outlook?

The history of card acceptance in the fast-food industry is marked by a series of fits and starts. A McDonald's, Arby's or Burger King would announce a pilot only to drop card acceptance months later, declaring the test a disappointment. Transaction authorization took too long, they said, a cardinal sin in an industry where quick service is crucial to success. And processing was just too expensive for restaurants that had average tickets of $4, $5 or $6.

Newly released documents and opinions about those documents show just how heated the upcoming debit card trial pitting retailers against Visa and MasterCard will be.