U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said that the U.S. Federal Reserve’s rules for debit card transaction fees and processing will remain in place while the central bank appeals a decision throwing out the regulations, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. Both the Fed and retailers had asked the federal judge in Washington to keep the current rules in place pending the appeal. Merchants “vastly prefer the status quo” to the “unregulated ‘free for all’ which would likely subject merchants to interchange fees well in excess of the Fed’s current standard,” lawyers for retail interests said in court filings Aug. 28. The merchants’ filing was in support of the Fed’s Aug. 26 request that the rules be left in place pending the central bank’s appeal.
