Credit Union Trade Group Warns Credit Card Competition Act Would Help Retailers, Not Shoppers

Jim Nussle, president and CEO of America's Credit Unions, sat down with Breitbart News economic editor John Carney in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday to make his case against a bill that's been kicking around Congress since 2022: the Credit Card Competition Act.

The bill comes from an odd pairing. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) first introduced it together, reintroduced it in January 2026, and it still has support on both sides of the aisle.

What the bill actually does

Right now, Visa and Mastercard control more than 80 percent of the credit card network market, according to figures cited in the legislation's background. Merchants who accept a Visa or Mastercard credit card are locked into that network and pay whatever processing fee it sets.

The CCCA would require banks holding more than $100 billion in assets to give merchants a choice of at least two networks per transaction, with at least one of those options being a network other than Visa or Mastercard. The stated goal, per the bill's authors, is to break up that duopoly and force fee competition.

The credit union argument

Nussle isn't buying it. He told Carney the bill amounts to "a transfer of wealth to the retail oligarchs in this country." His argument: retailers would get access to cheaper processing networks, but there's no guarantee they'd lower prices for shoppers. Instead, he says, they'd just keep the difference.

Nussle pointed to precedent. Durbin was also behind the 2010 Durbin Amendment, tacked onto the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which capped debit card interchange fees banks could charge retailers. Nussle called it "an eleventh hour legislative stunt" and said "there is no evidence that any of that savings have pushed to the consumer."

He also raised a fraud and cybersecurity concern. Cheaper, less-established payment networks, he argued, may not have the same fraud protection infrastructure that Visa and Mastercard have built over decades. Carney pressed him on this directly, asking whether the bill would hurt issuers' ability to fight fraud. Nussle said the current interchange system is "built for" establishing "reliable protection" with consumers, and warned that undercutting it could weaken that.

Nussle said credit unions, representing what he called "soldiers, sailors, teachers, and first responders," would be squeezed out. He warned his members might have to "retreat" and "pull product away from the kitchen tables of this country" to keep supporting big-box retail transactions.

The other side

Proponents of the CCCA, including major retail and convenience store lobbying groups, say forcing Visa and Mastercard to compete with other networks on price is exactly how markets are supposed to work. An 80-plus percent market share for two companies is the kind of concentration that normally draws antitrust scrutiny on its own. Competition, in theory, puts downward pressure on fees over time, even if that pressure takes years to show up in a receipt.

Whether that actually plays out for the debit-fee cap Durbin got in 2010 is genuinely disputed, and neither side in this debate has produced a definitive, independent study settling it either way in the material reviewed here. Nussle's claim that "there is no evidence" savings reached consumers is his organization's position, not a finding from an independent audit or regulator.

Who's talking and why it matters

Nussle runs a trade association whose member credit unions currently collect interchange revenue under the existing system. That doesn't make his fraud and consumer-harm concerns wrong. It does mean he has a direct financial stake in the outcome, the same as the retail lobby pushing the bill has a stake in lower processing costs. Readers should weigh both sides accordingly.

The Credit Card Competition Act has been introduced and reintroduced multiple times since 2022 without passing. It remains before Congress as of this month, with no floor vote scheduled. Whether it advances will likely hinge on whether retail lobbying groups or bank and credit union trade associations, including America's Credit Unions, can make a more convincing case to lawmakers that their side is the one actually protecting consumers.