INTERCHANGE9
Swipe-Fee Disclosures, Antitrust Pressure Likely Following Senate Hearing
As anticipated, bankers and card networks squared off with merchants at today’s Senate Judiciary hearing addressing credit-card interchange fees. Chairman Durbin (D-IL) strongly defended his amendment restricting debit-card fees, arguing that expanding fee constraints and network-competition provisions to credit cards would reduce inflation and increase consumer spending power. He did not, however, propose legislation to do so, instead pressing for transparency; we expect the CFPB to include a mandate for swipe-fee disclosures in the changes it plans shortly to propose to current card disclosure requirements (see Client Report CONSUMER42).