Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin plans to reintroduce the Credit Card Competition Act bill sometime “soon,” according to a spokesperson for his office.
It’s not clear whether the Democrat will strike an alliance again on the legislation with Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, but that would seem likely, given Marshall’s strong support previously for the bill as a co-sponsor. A spokesperson for the Kansas Republican didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The bill would land this year in a changed political environment with President Donald Trump now in the White House and the Senate also held by a Republican majority, giving that party control of Congress. Durbin first introduced the legislation in 2022.
One of a handful of Senate Republicans who backed the bill previously was J.D. Vance, who could throw his weight behind the bill as vice president. Trump has also proposed reform for the industry by suggesting during the presidential campaign that credit card interest rates be temporarily capped at 10%.
Nonetheless, Vance reportedly had backed away from the bill at one point last year as he campaigned during the run-up to the presidential election, according to a Politico report .
If the bill were to pass, banks that issue credit cards would have to ensure that for every consumer swipe there was a network available to merchants for routing the payment that wasn’t Visa or Mastercard. By requiring at least one alternative, it would presumably inject competition into a market the two networks dominate.
Some Republicans took the network behemoths to task last November during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, grilling executives from Visa and Mastercard about the companies’ practices. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who referred to their “classic collusive, monopolistic behavior” at the hearing, joined Senate independent Bernie Sanders this month in introducing a bill to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for five years.
The bill is part of a bid to temper the interchange and other fees that banks and their network partners charge big and small merchants alike every time a consumer swipes a credit card to make a purchase.
Retailers argue that the fees have surged to exorbitant levels over several years, sticking merchants and consumers with additional costs.
The card companies contend the fees have not increased significantly, if at all, and even if the legislation were to pass, consumers wouldn’t benefit because retailers, restaurants and other merchants would choose to keep the savings.
“The hearing in the Senate Judiciary committee last year gave a lot of momentum to the Credit Card Competition Act” legislation, Doug Kantor, general counsel for the National Association of Convenience stores, said in an interview Tuesday. That hearing “showed that there is very broad bipartisan support” for the bill. “Even skeptics believe it will pass, and it’s just a matter of time,” added Kantor, who is also a member of the executive committee of the Merchants Payments Coalition.
Retail trade groups, including the Merchant Payments Coalition, have battled bank and card network trade groups, such as the Electronic Payments Coalition, for decades over such legislative proposals.
“These mandates will not save consumers or small businesses money; corporate mega-stores will not lower prices; consumers and small businesses will lose valuable rewards programs and your data security will be put into jeopardy,” EPC spokesperson Nick Simpson said by email.
He maintained that the bill wouldn’t benefit small merchants so much as the biggest U.S. mega-stores. The EPC is committed to protecting the existing “safe, secure, efficient payment system,” Simpson added.
The fight is reminiscent of the two sides’ war over the Durbin Amendment that ultimately passed as part of the 2010 Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. That law brought more competition to the debit card network by capping interchange fees and imposing other curbs on such transactions.
“The networks ensure a great deal of consumer and merchant protections for a reasonably small fee shared across the ecosystem,” Baird Equity Research analyst David Koning said by email in commenting generally on the legislation. “Consumers often choose a credit card based on rewards, and if that card had multiple potential interchange structures across multiple networks, the issuing bank may not be able to provide the level of rewards that a consumer signed up for.”
Indeed, such legislative proposals have led bank trade groups to warn that card services and protections might be reduced if such legislation became law. They also noted that such credit might be extended to fewer consumers if such regulatory restrictions were to limit their ability to earn revenue and offset their costs.
For instance, the American Bankers Association previously denounced the Hawley-Sanders proposal to cap interest rates, calling it an attempt at “government price controls.”
“As history makes clear, this proposal would result in the loss of credit access for the very consumers who need it the most, forcing them to use less-regulated, more risky alternatives including payday lenders and loan sharks,” the ABA said earlier this month.
Correction: The story has been updated to correct Nick Simpson’s affiliation.