Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

The Federal Reserve Board on Thursday announced the approval of fee schedules for payment services the Federal Reserve Banks provide to depository institutions (priced services), effective January 2, 2009.

The Reserve Banks project that they will recover 93.7 percent of all their priced services costs in 2009.  This cost recovery is heavily influenced by the projected under recovery in the check service as it transitions to an end-to-end electronic check processing environment.  As an increasing proportion of checks collected through the Reserve Banks are presented electronically, the effective fees paid to collect checks using the Reserve Banks' Check 21 services are expected to decline 10 percent.  This change, along with a 41 percent increase in paper check fees, will further encourage the continued movement to electronic check collection.  In addition, the fees for the Reserve Banks' electronic payment services will increase approximately 2 percent.

The 2009 fee schedule for each of the priced services, except the check service, is included in the attached Federal Register notice.  Fee schedules for all priced services are available on the Federal Reserve Banks' financial services website at http://www.frbservices.org/.

In addition, the Board approved the 2009 private-sector adjustment factor (PSAF) for Reserve Bank priced services of $62.2 million.  The PSAF is an allowance for income taxes and other imputed expenses that would have to be paid and profits that would have to be earned if the Reserve Banks' priced services were provided by a private business. 

The Monetary Control Act of 1980 requires that the Federal Reserve establish fees to recover the costs of providing priced services, including the PSAF, over the long run, to promote competition between the Reserve Banks and private-sector service providers.

The Board's notice is attached.

Federal Register notice: 1.32 MB PDF | HTML