NEW YORK – The interchange schedule that the Australian government imposed in late 2003 have hurt consumers in the form of higher fees and interest rates on their cards, weakened and more expensive card rewards programs, and have not resulted in correspondingly lower prices that the government predicted, according to Datamonitor, an international business analysis firm. Australia is among the first nations to have undertaken these sorts of sweeping changes to the interchange portions of their card industry. Interested parties on both sides of the interchange debate in the U.S. have looked to Australia for information on what interchange change could bring if it were enacted here. "While the Reserve Bank predicted lower prices at the checkout as a result of the credit card interchange reforms, as yet there is no evidence that prices have actually been lowered," Datamonitor's 2005 report asserted. "Indeed, a number of banks and the Australian Bankers Association have rounded on the large retailers claiming that they are retaining the merchant fee reductions rather than passing them on to consumers. Merchants have been largely silent on the issue a characteristic that some may see as an admission of guilt."