Credit Card Competition Act: Where It Stands and What It Would Change

Where the Credit Card Competition Act stands in Congress, what it would change, and how to estimate its effect on your own card processing costs.

Adrian ReyesSenior Payments & Fintech Editor

October 29, 2026 · 8 min read

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Photo: Pixabay

On this page 7 sections

What the Credit Card Competition Act Would Require of Big Banks
Three Things the Bill Leaves Alone
Where the Durbin-Marshall Bill Stands in Congress
How Much of Your Volume the CCCA Could Touch
Your Pricing Model Decides Who Keeps the Savings
Who Is Pushing and Who Is Pushing Back
What Would Signal the Bill Is Moving

Key takeaways

The bill caps no fee. It also leaves out American Express and issuers under $100 billion in assets, so only part of your Visa and Mastercard credit volume would be affected.
For an illustrative store taking $60,000 a month in cards, savings came to $27 to $109 a month. The result depended as much on how much volume could be routed as on the price gap between networks.
On flat-rate pricing, routing savings reach you only if your provider lowers your rate. Ask your provider in writing now how it would pass them through.
The bill has two realistic paths left: a rider on a must-pass bill before Congress ends in January 2027, or a new bill in 2027 led by Sen. Peter Welch.

The Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) would require the largest U.S. credit card issuers to enable a second, unaffiliated network on their cards. Merchants would then choose which network carries each sale. The bill would not cap swipe fees. As of late October 2026, the Senate bill (S.3623) and its House companion (H.R.7035) are still in committee. Nothing has changed at your terminal, and nothing will until Congress passes a bill and the Federal Reserve writes the rules.

The pressure has changed, though. On Oct. 8, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump and Vice President JD Vance were backing the bill. It also reported that merchant lobbyists had talked with White House officials about attaching it to another bill after the November elections, according to Payment Review's summary of the report. The same summary notes that the payments industry considers passage unlikely.

This is general information, not legal or financial advice. Status reflects our research in late October 2026. Check GovTrack's page for S.3623 for the latest recorded action.

What the Credit Card Competition Act Would Require of Big Banks

The bill would amend the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and direct the Fed to write regulations. Those rules would stop "covered card issuers," meaning those with more than $100 billion in assets, and the card networks from restricting how many networks can process a credit card transaction. That description comes from Kilpatrick Townsend's analysis of the 2026 bill. Orrick's January 2026 summary puts it the same way: large issuers and networks could not limit credit card processing to one network or to affiliated networks.

In practice, a Visa or Mastercard credit card from a covered bank would also have to run on at least one network outside that brand's corporate family. The bank would pick which networks to enable, and you would pick which one handles each transaction.

The second network can't be just any network. The Congressional Research Service summary of the 2023 version excluded three kinds:

networks owned by or affiliated with the issuer
networks designated a national security risk
the networks with the largest market share

Merchants tend to miss that last condition. A bank could not meet the rule by putting Visa and Mastercard on the same card. NERA's analysis describes it as requiring that at least one routing option not be one of the two largest networks by cards issued.

The bill also protects the merchant's choice once it exists. According to Kilpatrick Townsend, covered issuers and networks could not:

require a merchant to use authentication or tokenization technology that some of the card's enabled networks can't use
block a competing network from processing transactions with that technology
penalize a merchant for its routing choice

Online sellers should pay attention to that clause. Tokenized card data is how many gateways store cards for repeat and subscription billing.

Debit cards already work this way. Regulation II, the Federal Reserve's rule implementing the debit provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act (the Durbin Amendment), requires issuers to enable every debit card on at least two unaffiliated networks. The Federal Reserve says that requirement took effect April 1, 2012, for the issuers of most debit cards. Our explainer on the Fed debit fee cap and Regulation II covers how that system has played out and where the Fed is taking the debit cap.

Three Things the Bill Leaves Alone

The CCCA is often sold as the fix for swipe fees. Three limits make it narrower than that.

It sets no price. The debit rules pair routing with a regulated interchange cap for large issuers. The CCCA caps no fee at all, as Payment Review points out. Any savings would have to come from networks competing to win your routing.

American Express cards are out of scope. Cards issued in a three-party model are exempt. In that model the issuer is also the network or shares ownership with it. Kilpatrick Townsend notes that American Express and Discover have traditionally used it. NERA argued that the exemption could tilt the market toward three-party systems; NERA says JPMorgan Chase retained it to prepare that analysis.

Smaller issuers keep today's setup. The $100 billion threshold leaves out community banks. The Merchants Payments Coalition says all but one credit union would be exempt, CSP Daily News reported. Cards from those issuers would route exactly as they do now.

Where the Durbin-Marshall Bill Stands in Congress

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) have worked together on this bill since 2022, Payments Dive reported. Their pattern is to introduce it, then try to attach it to legislation that is already moving.

Date	What happened	Source
2023	The CCCA of 2023 is introduced, with then-Sen. JD Vance and Sens. Peter Welch, Josh Hawley and Jack Reed as cosponsors. It does not pass.	CSP Daily News
May 20, 2025	Durbin and Marshall offer the CCCA as an amendment to the GENIUS Act stablecoin bill.	Payments Dive
Jan. 13, 2026	President Trump endorses the bill on social media. Marshall and Durbin reintroduce it in the Senate, and Reps. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) do the same in the House.	NACS
Jan. 29, 2026	Marshall tries to advance the CCCA as an amendment to the CLARITY Act, a digital asset bill.	Kilpatrick Townsend
March 12, 2026	The Senate passes the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act 89-10 without Marshall's CCCA amendment (S.Amdt. 4305).	PYMNTS
Oct. 8, 2026	The Wall Street Journal reports a renewed White House push and talk of a post-election vehicle.	PYMNTS
Oct. 25, 2026	Durbin, who is retiring, names Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) to carry the bill after he leaves.	Punchbowl News

GovTrack still lists S.3623 at the "Introduced" stage. Its only recorded action is the Jan. 13 introduction, and it has five cosponsors: two Republicans, two Democrats and one independent. As of August, neither the Senate Banking Committee nor the House Financial Services Committee had held a hearing on it. That finding comes from a Prediction.com review, which put prediction-market odds of the bill becoming law in 2026 at about 10%.

The 119th Congress ends in January 2027, and bills that haven't passed die with it. That leaves two realistic paths. One is a rider on a must-pass bill in the lame-duck session. The other is a new bill in 2027 under new bill numbers, with Welch as the lead Democrat.

How Much of Your Volume the CCCA Could Touch

The national numbers are big. The Merchants Payments Coalition projects $17 billion a year in savings for merchants and consumers, per CSP Daily News. A White House spokesperson told the Journal that swipe fees cost households $1,200 a year, NACS reported. Neither figure tells you what your own statement would show. To get that, filter your volume step by step.

Illustrative example. Every number below is a hypothetical assumption, not a forecast:

The store processes $60,000 a month in cards: 20% debit, 15% American Express and 65% Visa and Mastercard credit.
70% of that credit volume comes from banks above the $100 billion line.
Half of the in-scope volume actually gets routed to a cheaper network once issuers enable one and the processor supports it.
The alternative network costs 0.20 percentage point less, all-in.

Step	Share kept	Monthly volume
Total card volume		$60,000
Remove debit (already under debit routing rules) and Amex (exempt)	65%	$39,000
Keep credit cards from issuers above $100 billion	70%	$27,300
Keep sales actually routed to the cheaper network	50%	$13,650
Savings at 0.20 percentage point		$27.30 a month ($327.60 a year)

Now change two assumptions. If 80% of in-scope volume gets routed and the gap is 0.50 percentage point, the same store saves $109.20 a month, or $1,310.40 a year. The price gap between networks gets the headlines, but the share of volume you can route moves the result just as much. Neither number exists yet. Both depend on which networks issuers enable, how the Fed writes the rules and whether your processor builds routing logic for credit cards.

You can fill in the first two rows today. Your statement already splits debit from credit and shows your Amex share. Our guide to reading a processing statement line by line shows where to find them.

Your Pricing Model Decides Who Keeps the Savings

Routing savings would show up as lower network-level costs. On interchange-plus pricing, those costs pass straight through, so a cheaper route lowers your bill. On flat-rate or tiered pricing, you pay a set rate no matter which network carries the sale. Savings reach you only if your provider lowers your rate, a point Payment Review also makes. Our comparison of interchange-plus vs. flat-rate pricing walks through the tradeoffs.

You can act on this now. If you're on flat-rate pricing with meaningful Visa and Mastercard credit volume, ask your provider in writing how it would pass network cost changes through to you.

Card mix is the other variable. Opponents predict issuers would trim rewards programs, which would change which cards your customers carry. NERA also warns that interchange could stay flat or even rise if new networks don't undercut the incumbents. Treat any savings figure, including ours, as a range.

Who Is Pushing and Who Is Pushing Back

Marshall's office says the bill would end a "Visa-Mastercard duopoly that is squeezing small businesses." Retail groups back it, including the National Retail Federation, the Merchants Payments Coalition, NACS and the National Grocers Association.

Banks, networks and credit unions oppose it. The Electronic Transactions Association said routing mandates would undermine security, innovation and consumer protections, according to PYMNTS. America's Credit Unions called the housing-bill amendment a set of costly new credit card mandates. Kilpatrick Townsend notes that smaller lenders worry the bill would speed up bank consolidation. The Electronic Payments Coalition criticized the attempt to attach the bill to the housing package, CardRates reported.

What Would Signal the Bill Is Moving

Watch the amendment lists on year-end spending and defense bills between now and January, because that is where a lame-duck rider would show up. A markup in Senate Banking or House Financial Services would be the first formal step past introduction in either chamber. If neither happens, look for new bill numbers in 2027 with Welch's name on them. Two related fights over card costs are moving on their own schedules: the swipe fee settlement heading to final approval and the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act.

Credit routing won't change until Congress acts and the Fed finishes its rules, so the useful work this month is on your own setup. Fill in the first two rows of the example from your last three statements and confirm your pricing model. Also make sure your POS system and payment gateway can take software updates as routing rules change.

If you want lower card costs before any of that happens, eligible merchants can use dual pricing, cash discount and zero cost processing programs now, subject to state rules. Request a free quote from MannyPay to have a specialist review your statement. You'll hear back within one business day.

Sources

About the author

Adrian Reyes

Adrian Reyes is Senior Payments & Fintech Editor for Beyond the Swipe, covering credit card processing, merchant accounts, payment technology and processing fees.

This article is for general educational purposes and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Card network rules and state laws change; confirm current requirements for your business.