May 10, 2021 Pressure may be building on the Federal Reserve to take action on a debit card interchange-fee regulation that it has left intact for 10 years despite sweeping changes in the payments business, including an onrush of e-commerce transactions over the past year. In part, observers are reacting to a report the Fed released Friday indicating that issuers’ authorization, clearing, and settlement (ACS) costs for debit have declined dramatically over the years. In 2019, those costs came to 3.9 cents per transaction, roughly half the costs in 2009, according to the report. At the same time, the 10-year-old Fed ceiling on debit card interchange, which flows to issuers, in 2019 was greater than total ACS costs plus fraud losses for nearly 79% of covered issuers and close to 100% of covered transactions, the report says.