Americans may seen lower prices and savings at retail chains when new interchange fees go into effect

As the hot debate surrounding interchange fees begins to wind down in Congress, it looks as though retailers are poised to win a victory. As the House and Senate reached a compromise on a bill that will essentially lower interchange, or “swipe fees,” for credit and debit card transactions, consumers may be wondering how the new legislation will affect their wallets.

Once the bill is signed into law, merchants will feel some financial relief as the interchange fees – costs that the retailers must pay credit card issuers and banks for each credit or debit transaction – will decline. Read full article…

Telstra customers will soon be stung by additional credit card processing fees as a result of a raft of new charges that target those paying their bills in person.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Telstra consumer executive director Jenny Young said that the new charges will help the company recoup the “hundreds of millions of dollars” it spends every year on billing.

“We’re introducing or changing our fees for some payment options which incur higher administration costs. H

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ATM alerts that warn customers about the fees incurred for withdrawing cash have helped to save Australians $125 million, it has been revealed.

Research by the Daily Telegraph found that since March last year, when all ATM owners were officially obliged to reveal fees before transactions, consumers made 280 million withdrawals during the rest of the year compared to 342.2 million during the same period in 2008.

People are usually charged $2 for taking money from an ATM that is not owned by their bank.

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Beginning October of this year, Discover and American Express cardholders can breathe a sigh of relief as their credit card over-the-limit fees are laid to rest. Amex and Discover took the plunge to eliminate the fee in response to the Credit CARD Act of 2009, which mandates that card companies cannot charge over-the-limit fees unless consumers give their consent.

After doing the math, both card issuers independently arrived at the same conclusion: establishing a system through which cardholders could decide whether or not to have over-the-limit privileges (and pay the accompanying fees) would cost lenders more than they would rake in through fees.

As for the other big credit card issuers, such as Chase, Bank of America, Citi, and Capital One, it remains to be seen how they handle the new provision, which steps into effect in February of 2010.

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