On Wednesday, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers reintroduced a bill that would allow retailers to process Visa and Mastercard credit cards over different networks.
If passed, the Credit Card Competition Act of 2023 would give retailers access to unaffiliated networks to process credit card payments, which, in turn, could lower their fees.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., introduced a nearly identical bill last summer. At that time, the bill was submitted to the Senate Banking Committee, but it did not receive a vote. This time, a junior member of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, joined Durbin and Marshall in introducting the bill
During a Wednesday press conference, Vance said: "When I talk to Ohio businesses who say they're getting crushed ... by credit card transaction fees, you know what they'll tell me is, 'Well, they're just way too much.' And then I'll say, 'Why don't you go to somebody else?' And they'll say, 'Well, there is nobody else because we don't have a competitive market,' which makes it harder for these guys to do their thing."
"We want competition," he added, "because we want to enhance the operation of the free market in this industry. I think it'll be good for consumers; it'll be good for our small businesses; it'll be good for our communities from big cities to rural areas."
As it stands today, Visa and Mastercard pocket and set the network fees that merchants have to pay when customers use their cards for purchases. Additionally, the credit card giants also set the fees that merchants have to pay to the banks that issue credit cards.
Big banks and networks have lobbied against the bill, saying it would scale back the credit card reward programs, which are funded primarily by these interchange fees.
The industry is booming. Recently credit card debt reached nearly $1 trillion. Since the pandemic, it jumped nearly $250 billion.
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