Joint Trade Letter to House Leadership: Opposition to H. 8874, Credit Card Competition Act of 2022

Dear Speaker Pelosi, and Minority Leader McCarthy:

The American Bankers Association, Bank Policy Institute, Consumer Bankers Association, Credit Union National Association, Electronic Payments Coalition, Independent Community Bankers of America, National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions, and National Bankers Association write to express our strong opposition to the “Credit Card Competition Act of 2022” (H. 8874) introduced by Representatives Peter Welch (VT) and Lance Gooden (TX).

Far from increasing competition in the credit card marketplace, this legislation will hurt consumers and benefit big box retailers by reducing the number of credit card issuers competing for consumers’ business, removing a consumer’s choice of preferred card network, wringing out the competitive differences among card products, limiting popular credit card rewards programs, and putting the nation’s private-sector payments system under the micromanagement of the Federal Reserve Board. The Gooden-Welch bill accomplishes this by using legislation to circumvent the free market to award private-sector contracts to a small handful of the sponsors’ favored payment networks in order to pad the profits of the largest ecommerce¹ and multi-national² retailers who are raising prices on American families far more than the real rate of inflation³. As Federal Reserve Board Vice Chair Lael Brainard stated this month, retailer profits are near their highest levels since World War II⁴, but the global retail giants are demanding that Washington intervene on their behalf, even as they reject measures to cap their sudden retail price increases.

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