Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON — Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., will hold a long-awaited hearing on
Executives from Visa and Mastercard, the two card networks most impacted by the bill, however, are not listed to attend as of Tuesday afternoon. The hearing, which will be held Nov. 19, will be held by the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Durbin is the chairman and Marshall is the ranking member.
The Credit Card Competition Act has lingered in Congress for years,
It’s unclear if Vance stands by the ideas in the bill or if he would have any influence in the future Trump administration on credit card issues. But Trump himself floated a 10% rate cap plan for credit cards on the campaign trail, suggesting that the new administration might be open to changes on how the credit card landscape operates.
Other populist Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., have signed onto the bill, suggesting that it might be palatable to the rising populist Republican ranks that will be sworn into Washington in the next year.
“For years, Visa and Mastercard have taken advantage of their duopoly in the credit market to impose extreme fees on small merchants and retailers,” said Hawley in a statement earlier this year. “This legislation will grant Main Street relief from Wall Street’s extortionate business practices.”
The bill, the Credit Card Competition Act, would require credit cards issued by banks with more than $100 billion in assets to offer merchants the choice between two unaffiliated card networks, at least one of which cannot be Visa or Mastercard.
While Durbin and Marshall made a show of inviting the executives of the two card networks, neither are listed as attending the hearing.
“The card industry, on the other hand, wants to hide the facts and pretend the problem doesn’t exist,” said the Merchant Payments Coalition executive committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores general counsel Doug Kantor in a statement. “That’s why Visa and Mastercard’s CEOs have refused to show up for a hearing and have fought to avoid any hearings or votes on legislation to bring desperately needed competition to the broken payments market.”
The Electronic Payments Coalition Chairman Richard Hunt said that the committee should, rather, ask retailers “to answer for the failure to pass savings along to consumers when Congress passed price-fixing legislation on Americans’ debit cards.
“This hearing reeks of what it is, an 11th-hour attempt to deliver on promises made to some of their largest donors,” he said in a statement. “The facts are clear. These proposed credit card mandates will harm consumers, harm small businesses and hurt local financial institutions communities across the country rely on.”
The bill, in its current form, is still unlikely to become law, but it could be a starting point for Republicans to consider when they take up a tax bill to address expiring tax cuts Trump signed into law in 2017.