Heartland Payment Systems has announced the financial growth of its U.S. merchant customers, who have gained more than $262 million in signature debit savings since the payments processing company implemented the Durbin Amendment debit swipe fee reform last year.

Of these funds, merchants within the following categories recouped these amounts:

• Retail: roughly $30 million;
• Restaurant: more than $75 million;
• Petroleum/c-store: more than $55 million; and
• Lodging: nearly $10 million.

The Durbin Amendment was designed to reduce the business owner cost of accepting debit cards. The reform caps debit card interchange rates for issuing banks with more than $10 billion in assets at 21 cents per transaction, plus one cent for issuers with an effective fraud prevention system, and 0.05% of the volume of transaction. This is a significant reduction from the average of 44 cents that merchants paid per debit card purchase before the Durbin Amendment.

“Both business owners and consumers are feeling the relief of lower debit card swipe fees,” said Bob Carr, Chairman and CEO at Heartland, in a company press release. “Our merchant customers are putting their ‘Durbin Dollars’ to work in a variety of ways, such as opening new locations; purchasing new equipment, fixtures and delivery cars; offsetting rising fuel and food costs; and more. Consumers are also benefitting from our merchants not raising prices, and from non-Heartland merchants such as Home Depot, which lowered prices as a result of overall lower operating costs, thanks in part to the regulation.”