Finance committee  As I said at the outset, the commitment that we are here making and willing to enshrine is that we will open our books on the revenues and costs of these lines of business to the Department of Finance, or to the government, to ensure that my statements about being a low-cost provider are not hollow.

Finance committee  Yes, the same 0.8¢.

Industry committee  Right. So the 0.8¢ is to process a transaction--and I won't get into the details--in a single-message transaction set. So it's 0.8¢ for each message, if you will. It's processing the transaction from the merchant terminal into the Interac member network, etc., 0.8¢, and then on the issuer side processing the transaction from the account through into the Interac member network and so forth.

Industry committee  Interac does not. Interac just receives the 0.8¢. The acquirer has various contracts and pricing agreements with their merchant base, and I think 8¢ per transaction is the average debit merchant cost, which is a payment to the acquirer.

Industry committee  Yes. In fact, it's the opposite. I was commenting on MasterCard's testimony that their current rate in the Canadian market is a 0.5¢ switch fee. I believe they currently have interchange set at zero basis points. We've seen that before. What I was saying is that while it's tempting to comment as a cost recovery organization that knows the economics of this business, that has very little marketing or R and D on the sustainability of that, I was just pointing out that in all other markets that I know of around the world that is drastically lower than the Maestro and MasterCard debit pricing.

Industry committee  We have not done so and have no plans to do so, because interchange is not the problem here. The change is that Interac cannot be responsive in its current structure.

Industry committee  It's a great proxy. It underscores the urgency that we have here before us, the fact that Visa and MasterCard are already in the market. STAR Network was arguably the closest thing to Interac you're going to get in North America. They basically invented the PIN debit network in the United States and then, through many years of expansion, five years ago STAR Network had close to 60% market share of the United States PIN debit market--in the high fifties.

Finance committee  Interac does not. Interac just receives the 0.8¢. The acquirer has various contracts and pricing agreements with their merchant base, and I think 8¢ per transaction is the average debit merchant cost, which is a payment to the acquirer.

Finance committee  Yes. In fact, it's the opposite. I was commenting on MasterCard's testimony that their current rate in the Canadian market is a 0.5¢ switch fee. I believe they currently have interchange set at zero basis points. We've seen that before. What I was saying is that while it's tempting to comment as a cost recovery organization that knows the economics of this business, that has very little marketing or R and D on the sustainability of that, I was just pointing out that in all other markets that I know of around the world that is drastically lower than the Maestro and MasterCard debit pricing.

Finance committee  Right. So the 0.8¢ is to process a transaction--and I won't get into the details--in a single-message transaction set. So it's 0.8¢ for each message, if you will. It's processing the transaction from the merchant terminal into the Interac member network, etc., 0.8¢, and then on the issuer side processing the transaction from the account through into the Interac member network and so forth.

Finance committee  We have not done so and have no plans to do so, because interchange is not the problem here. The change is that Interac cannot be responsive in its current structure.

Finance committee  It's a great proxy. It underscores the urgency that we have here before us, the fact that Visa and MasterCard are already in the market. STAR Network was arguably the closest thing to Interac you're going to get in North America. They basically invented the PIN debit network in the United States and then, through many years of expansion, five years ago STAR Network had close to 60% market share of the United States PIN debit market--in the high fifties.

Industry committee  Yes, the same 0.8¢.

Industry committee  I can't divulge our strategies fully, but I would say that if we are able to restructure and this level playing field is instituted, that is a product we would strongly have to consider.

Industry committee  Yes, in a word, we would still be considering restructuring. The fact of the matter is the governance is challenged in reacting to the market and to product innovations, infrastructure, and so forth. I think Interac needs to evolve, because we're also competing on a world stage.