Lake Region News

Shane Sullivan, a resident of Laconia, N.H., said perennially-proposed federal credit card regulations could result in fewer options for credit card holders and threaten credit card rewards programs.

“I urge our elected officials to oppose the Credit Card Competition Act.,” Sullivan wrote in a letter to the editor in The Laconia Daily Sun. “While it claims to promote competition, in reality, it threatens consumer rewards programs, weakens security protections, and benefits big-box retailers at the expense of small businesses and everyday cardholders.”

“This legislation could lead to fewer credit card options, higher costs for consumers and increased fraud risks,” Sullivan wrote. “Instead of undermining a system that works, Congress should focus on policies that genuinely help consumers and small businesses.”

Originally sponsored by U.S. Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kans.), the so-called Credit Card Competition Act would require banks to offer merchants at least two network options, one of which cannot be Visa or Mastercard, for processing credit card transactions. Opponents to the bill argue that if given the choice, retailers would likely choose cheaper, less secure networks for processing transactions, thereby exposing consumers to increased securities and fraud risks.  

The bill applies to credit cards what a similar measure in 2010, often referred to as the “Durbin Amendment,” applied to debit cards. The 2010 measure was a requirement of the “Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.”

Nationally, the bill could lead to a $227 billion loss in U.S. economic activity and 156,000 lost jobs, according to an analysis conducted for the Electronic Payments Coalition (EPC) by Oxford Economics Research (OER).

In 2024, both the New Hampshire Bankers Association and New Hampshire’s Credit Unions – Cooperative Credit Union Association signed on to a letter to Congressional leadership opposing the bill.