Originally Posted by
mikesyr18
It's the principal behind it... When government gets involved, prices go up. Prices went up after Durbin was passed. It doesn't matter if it's "easy" to waive the fees, the fact is the minimums are higher and direct deposits are required now. Most credit unions offer an inferior service when it comes to technology, web interfaces, and other features, so many would rather use a bank like Chase.
Depends on what you're regulating. Adequate regulation, for instance, likely would have gotten chip and PIN (not signature) supported at nearly 100% of US merchants and banks by now. As is, we're supposedly only at 67% or so of merchants supporting chip at all, never mind contactless. And I'm not even sure 100% of issuers have chip-enabled cards, nor am I sure the other 33% of merchants will transition in anything approaching a reasonable timeframe.
Originally Posted by
mikesyr18
The solution would be for the government to tell Visa/MC/Disc/AMEX to split so there's eight competitors rather than four --- I'd rather see that than forced price controls through regulation.
What if four is the maximum the market can really support? Technically the US has
13 debit networks in addition to the four credit networks, yet all of the former combined are only supported in something like 50% of card-accepting stores at best.