Talk about the lengths to which online merchant account services providers must go to win customers and supporters. America’s financial institutions, still reeling from last year’s passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, are having a hard time winning over the regulators. With a somewhat desperate flair, the day-time denizens of Wall Street have been busy forking over millions to the most highly accomplished lobbyists they can book in order to convert the Act’s sternest new rules into more financially accommodating entities.

It’s being reported that the beautifully well-heeled folks of the Wall have already surpassed the $100 million mark in this year’s search for a political return on investment in Washington. The wooing of lawmakers does not come cheap. As for the lobbyists themselves, they’ve received $50.3 million in just the second quarter alone. Changes have hit the business of the debit and credit card. Processing equipment, for dealing with the upheavals, has not been limited to shelling out cash, of course. But the lobbying tools and their technicians comprise an important part of the banks’ plan to stay afloat. Moreover, there’s no reason to believe that the extraordinarily meticulous finance wizards of the nation’s moneybagging centers have not been doing their homework. Hardly anyone would think to question their choices when it comes to which regulators were targeted.

This is apart from rules governing a credit card processing service; the fees of debit card swipes, and the trading and lending rules changes have really got the banks unnerved. Nevertheless, lobbying is said to have dipped about 5 percentage points since last year, when the Dodd-Frank Act really came into focus.

So far, the banks’ efforts have paid off, though certainly not as much as they would have hoped. Together with their army of lobbyists, the banks have managed to extend some of the Act’s enforcement deadlines. And, of course, the banks were also able to obtain measured wins on the fees they are still able to charge merchants for purchases made with debit cards.