Recently, the Fed released its eighth biennial report on debit card transactions, providing an in-depth look at industry trends for 2023, pursuant to Section 920 of the EFTA. The report stated that payment card networks processed 100.7 billion debit and prepaid card transactions totaling $4.7 trillion in 2023, with interchange fees reaching $34.12 billion. The average interchange fee for covered transactions remained steady at 24 cents for single-message networks and 22 cents for dual-message networks, while exempt transactions averaged 52 cents.

The report further noted that network fees paid by acquirers and merchants rose to $12.95 billion, and dual-message transactions accounted for over 70 percent of total transactions, both by volume and by value. Fraud losses increased to 17.6 basis points of transaction value, with merchants absorbing nearly half of such losses, issuers bearing just over 25 percent, and cardholders accounting for 21.8 percent. The Fed highlighted that prepaid card transactions had the highest fraud rates, while single-message transactions had the lowest. The average authorization, clearing, and settlement cost for covered issuers was 4.1 cents per transaction, according to the report, and 80.1 percent of issuers had costs below the Regulation II interchange fee cap.