WASHINGTON—NAFCU and CUNA have joined the American Bankers Association, the Consumer Bankers Association, the Electronic Payments Coalition, and the Independent Community Bankers of America in a letter Congress expressing their opposition to the House companion to the Credit Card Competition Act of 2022 (CCCA).
This legislation, recently introduced by Representatives Peter Welch (D-VT) and Lance Gooden (R-TX) aims to expand interchange price controls by creating a new credit card routing mandate. Credit unions have been outspoken in criticizing the bill, which is strongly supported by merchants and merchants payments groups.
In the letter, sent to House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Ranking Member Patrick McHenry (R-NC), the groups argue the potential effects of the bill are clear, and include fewer options for consumers, greater threats to consumer data and privacy, weakened community banks and credit unions, and the disappearance of card rewards programs.
Big-Box Benefits
“Far from increasing competition in the credit card marketplace, this legislation will benefit the big box retailers by reducing the number of credit card issuers competing for consumers’ business, wringing out the competitive differences among card products, limiting credit card rewards programs and putting the nation’s private-sector payments system under the micromanagement of the Federal Reserve Board,” wrote the groups. “The Gooden-Welch bill does all this by eliminating using the free market and using legislation to award private-sector contracts to a small handful of the sponsors’ favored payment networks in order to pad the profits of the largest e-commerce and multi-national retailers who are raising prices on American families far more than the real rate of inflation.”
“Of course, we also have a link to our standalone voter registration site, creditunionsvote.org.” said Hawkins. “It’s a one-stop voter registration and ballot access portal.”
The site also includes a “toolkit” with plug and play materials, email templates, social media guidance and more for credit unions to use to ensure members are registered and can get out and vote, Hawkins said.
The Very Best in CU Reporting. For You. For Free. Or Your Money Back.
Don’t forget to check your Spam/Junk email folder if you haven’t been receiving your free, popular and daily CUToday.info news headlines.
And if you haven’t yet signed up for the new email solution on which CUToday.info has partnered with ResponseGenius, you can do so here. Signing up requires less than one minute of your time.
CUToday.info has received very positive response from readers following the move to an improved provider of the daily headlines, but many also noted they did need to go to their Spam/Junk folder and mark it as safe.
The new email solution has not only improved every reader’s delivery experience, but it also features a fresh, new format that is easy to read, especially on mobile devices.
Please note and/or make your IT department or email administrator aware the emails will be coming from the domains CUTodayinfo.com and CUTodayinfoReply.com.