Debit Interchange Rules and a Claimed Fintech Advantage

In this short clip, an unidentified speaker argues that differences in US debit-card interchange regulation can give a fintech such as Chime an advantage over a large bank. The speaker calls this “Durbin Amendment arbitrage.”

The speaker describes a threshold of $10 billion in assets and says smaller bank partners can receive a higher effective interchange rate. Chime is a fintech rather than a bank and works with banking partners; the exact economics depend on the issuer and transaction.

The clip’s numerical description is imprecise: the Federal Reserve’s Regulation II sets the base cap for covered issuers at 21 cents plus 5 basis points of transaction value, with a possible fraud-prevention adjustment. It is not a flat 50-basis-point charge. [Federal Reserve regulation](https://www.federalreserve.gov/frrs/regulations/section-2353-reasonable-and-proportional-interchange-transaction-fees.htm).

The speaker also describes the charge as paid by the consumer. Interchange is generally a fee received by the issuer in a card transaction, associated with the merchant side of the payment system; it should not be confused with a direct fee charged to the cardholder. [Federal Reserve guidance](https://www.federalreserve.gov/supervisionreg/regiicg.htm).

The small-issuer exemption generally looks at the issuer’s assets together with affiliates. The clip’s 1.2% figure is the speaker’s estimate, not a universal statutory rate, and eligibility can change over time. [Federal Reserve exemption guidance](https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regii-interchange-fee-standards.htm).