Key Unions Announce Endorsement Of Durbin, Marshal Credit Card Competition Act
The Teamsters, RWDSU, SEIU, and UFCW announced their support for the bipartisan legislation in a letter to Durbin and Marshall
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS) today announced that key unions, representing 4.5 million American workers, have endorsed their Credit Card Competition Act, which would enhance competition and choice in the credit card network market that is currently dominated by the Visa-Mastercard duopoly. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters; the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union (RWDSU); Service Employees International Union (SEIU); and the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) wrote a letter detailing their endorsement, emphasizing that swipe fees harm hardworking Americans.
“Unions understand Americans’ concerns about inflation and the rising costs of necessities like groceries and gas. As Americans are trying to make ends meet, the biggest Wall Street banks, Visa, and Mastercard, are lining their pockets by charging outrageous swipe fees on each credit card transaction. For the benefit of working Americans being charged for swiping their credit card, we must inject competition into the credit card market,” Durbin said. “I wholeheartedly welcome the endorsement of these unions who are looking out for their members and American consumers.”
“Visa-Mastercard and Wall Street banks are charging American families the highest swipe fees in the world — nearly five times higher than those in other countries,” said Marshall. “These excessive fees cost the average hardworking American household over $1,200 a year. No one understands the burden of these costs better than our trade unions, and I’m proud to have their support as we fight to bring fairness and competition back to the payments market.”
“While our memberships are diverse, hail from different industries, and different parts of the country, all unions know that working people are reeling from an affordability crisis on everyday goods. This crisis is especially challenging for low wage workers who often need to make necessary purchases like gasoline, groceries and clothing on credit cards,” unions wrote in their endorsement letter. “We embrace the Credit Card Competition Act as a means to return more buying power to hard working Americans by curbing the outrageous rise in fees charged by Visa and Mastercard to merchants in the United States.”
Building off debit card competition reforms enacted by Congress in 2010, Durbin and Marshall’s Credit Card Competition Act would direct the Federal Reserve to ensure that the largest credit card-issuing banks offer a choice of at least two networks over which an electronic credit transaction may be processed. The legislation is estimated to save merchants and consumers $17 billion each year.
Visa and Mastercard wield enormous market power in credit cards; they account for more than 726 million cards or about 84 percent of general-purpose credit cards. Visa’s and Mastercard’s market power and network structure have enabled them to impose fees on U.S. merchants that are among the world’s highest, charging a total of $101 billion in U.S. merchant credit card fees in 2023. Thesefees include interchange or swipe fees which Visa and Mastercard require merchants to pay to issuing banks, as well as network fees that Visa and Mastercard require merchants to pay directly to them. Consumers ultimately pay for these fees in the price of the goods and services they buy.
A copy of the endorsement letter is available here.
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