FRB Publishes Report on 2013 Debit Card Transactions

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System published a report on the volume and value, interchange fee revenue, issuer costs, and fraud losses related to debit card transactions in 2013. This is the third report in a series that is to be published every two years pursuant to section 920 of the Electronic Fund Transfer Act ("EFTA").

The Board estimated debit-card fraud losses to merchants, cardholders and issuers to be $1.57 billion in 2013, with an average loss in share transaction value of approximately 8 basis points - a slight increase since 2011. The report also noted that covered issuers with average ACS costs below the maximum interchange fee in 2013 processed over 99 percent of all reported covered transactions - the same proportion as in 2011. Additionally, the median issuer fraud loss, which serves as the basis for the ad valorem portion of the interchange fee standard, is essentially unchanged from 2011 (5 basis points). The Board does not plan to propose revisions to the Regulation II interchange fee standard or the fraud-prevention adjustment based on the survey data.