Todd Zywicki, Geoffrey Manne, & Julian Morris on the Durbin Amendment

ICLE President Geoff Manne, Senior Scholar Julian Morris, and Nonresident Scholar Todd Zywicki were cited by Regulation in a story about the history of the Durbin amendment. You can read the full piece here.

Other studies have found that, despite possible short??run savings to merchants, the interchange fee cap regulation had an adverse effect on consumers. A 2014 Mercatus Center working paper by Todd Zywicki, Geoffrey Manne, and Julian Morris estimated that the interchange fee cap led to an increase of $22.8 billion in annual costs for consumers, resulting mainly from higher fees on bank accounts, such as monthly maintenance fees, overdraft fees, and ATM fees. They found that the regulation reduced the availability of free checking accounts by 50 percent and increased minimum balance requirements by 23 percent. Moreover, the regulation reduced incentives for card issuers to offer user rewards and benefits such as cash back, points, and discounts. They also found that some issuers reduced the issuance of debit cards, especially to low??income and unbanked consumers, who are more likely to use debit cards for small??value transactions.