This is actually kind of my area of expertise! Not to go too far into it, but I work in banking in the area that kind of deals with legislation and so on. It's called Compliance. I'm going to leave it fuzzy. It's boring.

Anyway, debit/payroll cards are regulated under federal Regulation E, but the thing is, they're not regulated very well right now. Most of them are fee-laden and don't necessarily properly disclose the fees. It's a developing issue in the regulatory world and I anticipate there will be some amendments made to Reg E in the future that will deal with this.

Unfortunately in the regulatory world it's very much a matter of "do bad until someone catches you, they regulate for it, find some new innovative way to do bad."

Here's just a link about Reg E and payroll cards. http://www.philadelphiafed.org/bank-resources/publications/c...