Retailers urge Senate to approve swipe‑fee amendment

WASHINGTON — The Merchants Payments Coalition and nearly 350 merchant trade associations urged the Senate Agriculture Committee to include the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) as an amendment to upcoming cryptocurrency marketplace legislation. The CCCA was recently endorsed by President Trump.

“We call on you to choose Main Street merchants and American consumers over Wall Street megabanks and global card networks,” the organizations said in a letter to members of the committee. “While this legislation would benefit all merchants, it is small retailers who are calling for swipe fee reform more than any other segment of our industry. Small retailers have the narrowest profit margins and fewest resources and are hit hardest by continuing unjustified increases in swipe fees.”

The letter was signed by nearly 350 merchant trade associations whose members are the backbone of the U.S. economy. The groups represent interests across all 50 states and make up a broad cross-section of Main Street including neighborhood retailers, family-owned stores, independent shops and large national retailers.

The Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee is scheduled to take up crypto marketplace legislation during a voting session on Tuesday. Senators Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Richard Durbin, D-Ill. — the lead sponsors of the CCCA — have been joined by Senator Peter Welch, D-Vt., in offering an amendment that would make the CCCA part of the crypto bill.

The committee action comes two weeks after Trump endorsed the CCCA, which he said is needed “to stop the out of control Swipe Fee ripoff,” and the measure was reintroduced in both the House and Senate.

The Marshall-Durbin amendment is similar in most respects to the reintroduced CCCA. It differs in that its requirements would be enforced through antitrust remedies rather than Federal Reserve regulation. Like the bill, the amendment’s requirements would apply only to giant financial institutions, and the vast majority of the nation’s banks and credit unions would not be affected or subject to any enforcement actions.

The CCCA is supported by almost 2,000 companies as well as a broad group of consumer, labor and pro-competition organizations. Earlier this month, consumer, antimonopoly and small business groups sent Congress a letter saying, “Reform is urgently needed to boost competition in credit card payments to relieve heavy cost burden borne most onerously by small businesses and consumers at a time when affordability is perhaps the top issue in modern American economic life.” In addition, the Coalition of Large Tribes, which represents more than 50 of the nation’s largest Native American tribes, sent a letter to Congress expressing “strong support for the inclusion of the Credit Card Competition Act in any moving vehicle at the soonest opportunity.”
 Credit and debit card swipe fees — which have risen 70% since the pandemic and reached a record $187.2 billion in 2024 — are most merchants’ highest operating cost after labor. The fees are far too high to absorb, especially for small merchants, and drive up consumer prices by nearly $1,200 a year for the average family.

Visa and Mastercard — which control 80% of the market — each centrally set the swipe fees charged by banks that issue cards under their brands, and also block transactions from being processed over other networks that could do the job with lower fees and better security. The CCCA and the Marshall-Durbin-Welch amendment would require banks with at least $100 billion in assets to enable cards they issue to be processed over at least two unaffiliated networks — Visa or Mastercard plus a competitor like NYCE, Star or Shazam.

 Banks would choose which networks to enable but merchants would then choose which to use, resulting in competition over fees, security and service that is expected to save merchants and consumers $17 billion a year. Rewards would not be affected, security would be improved, consumers would still use the same cards, and community banks and all but one credit union would be exempt.