Transaction Monitoring Costs and the Durbin Amendment

Are your transaction monitoring costs more than $0.007 per transaction?

If so, we need to talk. Buried deep in the Durbin Amendment Final Rule, is an interesting number – the median cost of transaction monitoring is $0.007 per transaction. Even more interesting was the spread from the median cost ($0.007) to the 80th percentile cost ($0.012)*. That means some issuers are paying up to 70% more for transaction monitoring than the Fed thinks is “normal”.

Why is there such variation? I think I know the answer. For some issuers (and processors), it’s just harder to get at the transaction information you need to do effective monitoring. It’s fragmented across multiple applications, accessed through different tools, and getting at it consumes a lot of expensive resources on your processing systems. So even if you have the same fraud monitoring software as the next guy, and paid the same price, you could be paying a lot more to feed it the right data.

Fortunately, there’s a better way. New business transaction monitoring technology can pull transaction information in real-time from multiple applications and feed it directly into your fraud systems, providing a complete view of every transaction and allowing you to turn off expensive extraction tools on your processing systems.

The median cost of transaction monitoring for our customers? $0.00023 per transaction.

* Source: FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM 12 CFR Part 235 Regulation II; Docket No. R-1404 RIN No. 7100 AD 63 Debit Card Interchange Fees and Routing