The recession has brought closer such a world: total debit transactions now exceed credit transactions.

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The decline is primarily because Visa maintains a near monopoly, almost three quarters of total debit card transactions are processed through Visa.

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U.S. payments volume, a measure of the total dollar amount of transactions made with debit and credit cards, fell by three percent in April and remained flat over the first four weeks of May compared with last year.

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And those totals are not even counting debit cards, which are roughly 40% of the total market and growing.

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The total service fees that Bank of America earns from its debit and credit card business was relatively stable prior to 2009 aided by high interchange fees and card fees in the US relative to the rest of the world, which helped generate strong revenues for the card industry.

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