The US merchant lobby is indeed incredibly powerful, so much so that they have delayed chip/pin for years because of the big retailer database concerns, now mostly changed. Europe is a quite different matter. The EU has already gone far to equate credit and debit interchange, admittedly a benefit to merchants but the DCC and related issues are easily visible in the EU prohibition of cross border treatment differences within the Eurozone. DCC was dreamed up in the first place by, allegedly, a Visa executive, and while usually the views of the practice seem negative by industry executives they are far from universally so. Despite the US reluctance to close any opportunity for merchant ripoff so long as it is sufficiently arcane the Brussels and ECB views are different, partly because their policies tend to be influenced by technocrats rather than politicians. The interchange processes are a clear case in point. How many politicians anywhere even know what it is? How many European large retailer CEO's do?

Obviously the potential for regulation regarding DCC is a matter of opinion, and i absolutely know people who are very knowledgable arguing both sides. I'm guessing your are one of those by your comments. i respect your opinion and do think you've made a quite plausible case, but i still think there will be EU activity in this arena. One reason is that a Brussels-based colleague of mine has recently been asked to brief some EU staffers on DCC. Does that mean anything? I do not know, but I hope so.