After reading the March 31 Editor-in-Chief's column, thought I would respond to what was said about increases in fee income as well as operating expenses.

As stated, credit unions receive interchange income from debit card transactions. We are a very small ($11 million) credit union and receive gross interchange income of around $3,000 a month. Our debit card expenses for processing, fraud and other cost are over $3,000 a month. We figure we just about break-even and give our members a nice service (until a fiasco like Heartland comes along and our operating expenses for losses go through the roof-but, I am not talking about that here).

Our fee income without interchange is $7,000-including interchange income increases our fee income about 40%. We have actually reduced our members' fees, but it does not look that way. In addition, our operating expenses are up over $3,000 as well for those debit card expenses, which means it looks like we are spending additional monies, when, in reality, it is just the increases in debit card use.