In recent years, some Canadian politicians and powerful interest groups have issued increasingly vocal calls for dramatic regulatory interventions into the country's payment cards system. In particular, they have called for a "hard cap" price-controls on interchange fees, a ban on contractual...

Over the past 20 years the consumer payments system has been transformed as electronic payments such as debit and credit cards have rapidly displaced legacy payment systems, especially checks. At the same time, this growth in the use of electronic payments has triggered increasing government...

The Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation capped debit card interchange fees for banks with assets of $10 billion. Credit card and prepaid card interchange fees were not regulated. The cap, which took effect on October 11, 2011, cut the average interchange fee for...