A vote in the Senate on the Credit Card Competition Act may happen as early as this week, said the National Association of Convenience Stores.
The bipartisan act was introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate on June 7 to increase credit card competition and bring down costs for small businesses. If passed into law, the NACS estimates the act would result in $15 billion in annual savings, $1.5 billion of which would benefit the convenience store industry.
“The Credit Card Competition Act of 2023 would enhance credit card competition and choice in order to reduce excessive credit card fees,” explained bill proponent, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, in an informational factsheet on his website. “It would require the largest credit-card issuing financial institutions in the country—those with assets over $100 billion–to enable at least two credit card networks to be used on their credit cards instead of just one, and at least one of those networks must be a network other than the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.” This would increase competition and reduce the power of both financial institutions.
Durbin advocated for it to be considered an amendment to a package of spending bills known as the “minibus.”
Visa and Mastercard have recently increased fees for merchants and customers, according to Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, reports local news source WCAX 3.
“Where there is a monopoly—or in this case a duopoly—and there’s this massive pricing power that Visa and Mastercard have, they’re doing what monopolies do and duopolies do: they abuse that pricing power, and they stick it to our merchants. It was $33 billion in charges, it’s $93 billion in charges now,” said Welch in a statement to his colleagues.
Visa, Mastercard, and large banks have been calling on Congress to block the bill’s vote. Full Story
Related: Missouri Attorney General Sues Dollar General; Ukraine to Sue Over Food Import Bans.