Debit cards are off-limits everywhere. Here's the federal rule that makes it so.

A federal rule that overrides every state

The Durbin Amendment, part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, does two things relevant to your processing statement: it caps the interchange that large banks (over $10 billion in assets) can charge on debit card transactions, and — combined with card network operating rules — it makes surcharging debit card transactions prohibited nationwide, regardless of any state's surcharge law.

This is why every state page on this site, no matter how permissive the state's credit card surcharge rules are, says the same thing about debit: never allowed, no exceptions, even for a debit card run as 'credit' at the terminal.

Why this matters for your rate review

Because debit interchange is capped for large-bank-issued cards, debit transactions are almost always the cheapest card type you accept — which is exactly why a surcharge program that excludes debit (as it legally must) recovers less than the sticker percentage would suggest if a meaningful share of your volume is debit. Knowing your actual debit-vs-credit split is one of the most useful numbers for deciding whether a surcharge program is worth running at all.

The specific debit interchange cap itself is set by Federal Reserve regulation (Regulation II) and gets revisited periodically — it's one of the only figures on this page tied to an actual government rulemaking process rather than a fixed legal principle, which is why we flag this page for a periodic recheck rather than treating it as permanently settled.

Common questions