Sen. Dick Durbin met with members of retail and restaurant associations this week, plugging his previously proposed Credit Card Competition Act, but he still hasn’t introduced the bill this congressional session.
When Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, spoke at the National Restaurant Association’s annual conference in Washington on Wednesday, he recounted how small business owners of gas stations and a convenience store are being hurt by the high cost of swipe fees they pay on credit card transactions. The expense of the fees is eliminating their profits in some cases, he said in a release regarding his appearance at the conference.
Durbin urged restaurateurs to explain their credit card cost plight to their congressional members. “Tell your representative how swipe fees take up a huge portion of your budget, how they prevent you from lowering prices, and how you are not able to hire additional employees,” the release said.
For two decades, Durbin has been spearheading efforts to reduce fees that merchants are charged by bank card issuers and their card network partners. He pushed legislation that helped cap debit card fees as part of the 2010 Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Durbin has blamed Visa and Mastercard for being a duopoly that has increased the fees.
In the past two years, Durbin teamed up with Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas to sponsor the CCCA, which would encourage competition in the network arena by forcing bank card issuers to ensure that merchants have an alternative network to Visa and Mastercard for routing their credit card transactions. Currently, merchants pay between 2% and 3% in fees every time a consumer uses a credit card to pay.
On Thursday, some members of the National Retail Federation also met with Durbin in his Washington office to speak about the card fee issue and his plan to reintroduce the CCCA bill, a spokesperson for the senator said.
“It was great to get some face time with him and talk about the path forward for the Credit Card Competition Act,” NRF’s senior director of government relations, Dylan Jeon, said in a Friday interview.
Nonetheless, it’s not clear what’s keeping Durbin from moving ahead with reintroducing the CCCA, given his office’s stated plan to do so earlier this year. Marshall’s office hasn’t responded to a request for comment on the matter.
“We do plan to reintroduce, but I don’t have a date yet,” said the spokesperson for Durbin, who asked not to be named.
It’s mainly a matter of timing and lining up support, Jeon said. “We’ve been making sure to get all our ducks in a row and drop the bill at the right time with a good amount of support,” he said, contending that Marshall also remains committed to the bill.
“If enacted, the legislation would save merchants and consumers an estimated $15 billion each year, according to a Thursday press release Durbin issued after the meeting with retailers.
Other members of Congress have introduced bills this year that would significantly reduce the cost of credit cards for consumers, capping interest rates on that lending at 10% for five years. Those bills were introduced in both the House and the Senate this year with bipartisan support.
