Simpson: Reintroduced credit card mandates would cost consumers
Despite its name, the reintroduced Credit Card Competition Act has little to do with competition or even lowering costs for consumers. In a CUInsight op-ed, America’s Credit Unions President/CEO Scott Simpson shares how it would be a financial windfall for only the largest retailers, repeating failed policies from the Durbin Amendment’s debit card mandates.
“The government’s harmful intervention in the debit card market provides a clear cautionary tale for policymakers now eyeing the credit card system. Every day consumers simply cannot afford a repeat of the Durbin experiment,” Simpson notes. “No matter what you call it, the Credit Card Competition Act won't deliver competition or savings. It would increase costs, and they land squarely on the shoulders of the people who can least afford them.”
New credit card mandates would:
- Harm data privacy and security by allowing retailers to choose cheaper, less secure networks;
- Shrink access to credit with a loss of interchange funds to cover the costs of maintaining a credit card program; and
- Ultimately result in consumers facing less access to credit, higher fees, reduced protection, with no guarantee of any benefits or savings.
America’s Credit Unions, leagues, and credit unions successfully kept Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., from a credit card mandate bill to a digital assets bill during a Senate Agriculture Committee markup last week.