HOUSTON -- Effective October 1, 2011, ConocoPhillips will pass through to its customers the debit-card rate savings that have resulted from the recently passed interchange-fee reforms. "The temporary card fee adjustment to PIN debit, MasterCard and Visa card fees will be reduced by at least 0.15% to 0.20%," the company said.
"We have communicated [the announcement] to our branded customers regarding the impact of Durbin on processing fees. Permanent changes to the credit-card fee table will be considered once all the impacts of the new regulations are known," said Mike O'Connor, manager of wholesale marketing programs at ConocoPhillips, Houston, in an email.
"We have received a lot of interest from our marketers and resellers on the impact of Durbin," O'Connor told CSP Daily News.
They, like other retailers, are now faced with the decision of what to do with the savings they garner from the fee reductions.
A recent CSP Daily News Poll asked, "Do you think that convenience retailers will pass swipe-fee savings onto their customers?" Of the approximately 175 responses, more than 44% said "no"; more than 22% said "yes"; 17% said "yes, most"; more than 12% said "a few"; and about 4% said "yes, all."
"Most enterprising storeowners will apply the swipe fee savings to lowering product costs in an effort to be even more competitive in the marketplace," Bruce Maples, chairman of the National Coalition of Associations of 7-Eleven Franchisees (NCASEF), told PYMNTS.com in July. "Lower swipe fees enable us to give our customers the best cost of goods possible and to grow our businesses by adding employees. Unregulated swipe fees eat away at our revenue and prohibit us from hiring more employees and becoming more involved with the communities we serve." (Click here for previous coverage.)
And click here to watch a CSPTV report on how one retailer decided to deal with the swipe-fee situation.
Last year, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) championed an amendment to the to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act (H.R. 4173). The Durbin Amendment fixed the broken interchange system that allowed credit-card companies to operate without regulation and to charge excessive and increasing fees, negatively impacting small-business owners and consumers across the United States. Effective October 1, 2011, it caps debit-card interchange fees at 21 cents per transaction plus 0.05% of the volume of transaction.
ConocoPhillips is an energy company with $160 billion of assets and $226 billion of annualized revenues as of March 31, 2011. The company's retail brands including Phillips 66, Conoco and 76.
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