The Fed released its latest update on debit card interchange, and it showed very subtle but very telling trends for financial institutions with less than $10 billion in assets – a category called “exempt”, which includes all the credit unions in the U.S. except the top 7. While the lines of the graph (found here) look relatively horizontal, two takeaways are worth noting.

The EMV migration and fraud liability shift continue in the United States, and some issuers are still going through a natural re-issue process for both debit and credit card products to issue chip cards to their cardholders.  Many national issuers implemented chip card technology utilizing a mass re-issue strategy, while a small number of issuers haven’t started issuing chip cards. Others never plan to issue chip cards as there is no mandate requiring issuers to do so.  Issuers who choose to continue to issue magstripe cards instead of chip cards, and issuers who have not completed a natural re-issue, are deciding to accept the risk of the liability shift for fraudulent transactions. They are also taking the risk of losing cardholder transaction volume. 

Two years ago, ThePaymentsReview published an article asking the question “Will contactless payment cards catch on in the United States?” So far, they have not. But if it is up to the major card brands, that will change very soon. 

Most Americans are not familiar with contactless cards, which allow the cardholder to “tap-to-pay”, just like tapping a phone to pay. These cards are also called dual-interface cards, since they can still be used like traditional cards, but also have an antenna that can communicate with a point-of-sale terminal without being inserted or swiped; tapping to pay is the second interface.

Immersion18, the first conference for the Trellance team under their new brand, incorporated the same insightful, educational and informative information as in the previous twenty-six years, but with a lot more collaboration and fun.

Tom Davis, President and CEO, kicked off this year’s annual conference stating “We have to be independent to be your best advocate.” Tom went on to explain that “While Trellance provides many of the same services it offered before, such as card processing; three words will drive its future: Independent, unbiased advocate.” Tom gave the four key factors toward credit union success: Hiring top talent, collaboration, having vision, and using data analytics. Bill Lehman, SVP of consulting services, spoke next, introducing some of the 17 new services offered by Trellance.

Use of debit continues to grow as consumers shift their cash and check spend to the convenience of plastic. According to the Fed, the number of debit payments increased from 56.5 billion in 2012 to 69.5 billion in 2015, the largest increase in the number of payments among the payment types. More recently, and more relevantly, Trellance credit unions saw their Visa Signature Debit transactions grow year over year in January 2018 by 8.83%. Yet at the same time, credit unions are seeing a decline in average debit interchange. So, what is going on?