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Starting October 1, the government will regulate how much banks can charge merchants for debit card transactions. This is the so-called Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory act passed by the last Congress in 2010. I think the debit card fee is a reaction from the banks to the lost revenue due to the new law--a law sold, by the way, as "consumer protection." I think you can view this as an unintended yet inevitable consequence of the government intervening in the market. Fees that previously were paid by the merchants have been shifted to the consumer, which seems to be a rather perverted kind of protection.
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