Paul Garcia
Analyst · Goldman Sachs
Yes, Julio, this is a bit of a slippery slope. So here's the bottom line. The Durbin amendment effective October 1, will, as the Fed defined it, even with the adjustments, will yield a pretty significant reduction, particularly in SIG debit, with a higher average ticket. And just to weight the nature of how this is basis points and cents per transaction, so it's pretty big reduction. Now with the great majority of our merchants, clearly our large merchants, in terms of volume, we have what's called interchange and assessment. So that's a passthrough. They get the full benefit of it. But the smaller merchants, you have discretion whether you give that all to them or not. The competitive nature of this business is such, and we've had 1 competitor that was very public about giving every bit of it away to every single merchant regardless of size. So you consider the reality of the competitive environment and you make decisions. But every basis point you keep is a basis point of profit. And you, of course, temper that with you don't want to lose that merchant. You want to offer a fair competitive deal. So that's the strategy we have in place. It's not a strategy, Julio, that we'd be well served discussing in a public environment or any environment except internal. And -- but just be assured that there will be opportunities for us to keep some of that appropriately. I mean the thought that a very large merchant and a very small merchant are treated exactly the same is not how it works in a free enterprise system. So we recognize that but it also does not mean that if you treat anybody inappropriately or unfairly, they'd vote with their feet. And our attrition numbers are something we're proud of, meaning it's very low. So very windy answer, is that Durbin is going to be beneficial for us for some pricing opportunities. It's also beneficial for us even if we gave 100% of it back, and that it takes a little pressure off of pricing renegotiations. You're having a very happy discussion at any level, whether you give some of it back or all of it back, you're having a very happy discussion with somebody and guess what, your rate is going down, in some cases, materially. So you're a merchant of any size, you're going to feel pretty good about that and you're going to feel good about us about that. So that's pretty much the sum.