A year or so from now, merchants likely will be paying less to accept debit cards, and financial institutions will be earning less revenue issuing them. And some issuers may have to reacquaint themselves with PIN-debit brands not associated with Visa Inc. or MasterCard Worldwide. These are among the results likely to transpire if Congress in the coming days signs off on the final version of financial-reform bill approved by a reconciliation conference committee in the early hours of June 25. A vote on the newly named Dodd-Frank Act could come as early as July 1, but could be pushed past the congressional holiday after a House and Senate conferees agreed late Tuesday to strip a proposed bank tax from the bill and add other budget offsetting mechanisms in its place.  The final bill includes a controversial amendment authored by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., that would require the Federal Reserve Board for the first time to set debit card interchange rates according to “reasonable and proportional” standards. The amendment also bans brand-exclusivity arrangements between card networks and debit card issuers.  “This has been quite a coup for merchants,” Philip Philliou, managing director of the consultancy Philliou Selwanes Partners LLC, tells PaymentsSource. Merchants have been “lobbying hard for years” for interchange-rate reductions, he notes...<<read more>>