I wouldn't describe interchange fees that way. As I think we've testified already today, there are many objectives and many considerations that we look at in setting interchange fees.
Certainly there is the value proposition to the merchant community relative to cash. We have a General Accountability Office study that looked at the processing of payments in the postal service in the United States and found that we were lower cost. I think the value proposition versus American Express is important to look at. But there's also the cost structure that our issuers incur, not only in funding rewards, as we've talked about, on premium products, but also the credit risk exposure and the costs of marketing and customer service, and the infrastructure investments made to lower costs, to lower risks, and to lower fraud. All of these things are factored into interchange. But if we step back, it really isn't a mechanism to try to extract value.
Visa, as a for-profit company, is trying to drive as many transactions over our network as possible. We establish an interchange fee not with the issuers in mind, not with the merchants or the acquirers in mind, but we set interchange rates to try to drive as many transactions over our network. And if we could do that through lower interchange rates, we would do that; and if we could do that through higher interchange rates, we'd have the incentive to do that.
Right now, we think our current interchange rate structure works. It could change tomorrow, based on market dynamics, and that's our concern as it relates to regulation—our ability to respond to market dynamics with our interchange structure.