NEW YORK - Visa Inc. announced last week plans to implement a new fixed acquirer "Network Participation Fee" that will apply to both credit and debit cards, "in order to help the company win routing business and maintain debit volumes," reports DigitalTransactionNews.com.

The news source writes that the new fee structure is expected to make Visa "a more viable alternative to competing PIN-debit networks, which stand to pick up new business from current Visa card issuers as merchants take advantage of network-affiliation and transaction-routing provisions in the Federal Reserve's new debit card regulations."

"We expect the lower fees to help us win debit routing volume and to effectively compete on the issuing side of the business," said Visa Chairman and CEO Joseph W. Saunders during Visa's quarterly earnings conference call with analysts, adding, "We now have the clarity needed in the regulatory environment to execute strategies that will allow Visa to compete for transaction routing. The fixed fee is not a fee that sits on top what merchants are paying, but part of the reduction in what merchants will be paying. We are comfortable with our situation."

Per the Durbin Amendment, merchants now have a choice to rout debit transactions made with Visa- or MasterCard-branded cards to a lower-cost network. Visa expects that its debit volume and debit revenues will decline.

"We expect some loss of debit routing volume in fiscal 2012, but expect strategies in place will help us begin seeing growth from that fiscal 2012 baseline in fiscal 2013," said Visa CFO Byron H. Pollitt Jr. "Our strategies aim to address the new rule of offering at least two unaffiliated networks on debit cards."

The news source adds that Saunders said more details about Visa??s new pricing and debit strategies would be revealed in the next several months, and that Visa "has no plans to extend the new pricing model" outside of the United States.