Credit Card Competition Act: Senate timing and Fed rules
The bill would require each large issuer to carry a network outside the top two. Even if enacted this year, its rule might not take effect until mid-2028; the Senate is out until the week of 9 November.
A card that carries only Visa and Mastercard breaks the Credit Card Competition Act as written. The bill text of S.
3623, introduced January 13 by Senator Roger Marshall with Senators Durbin and Welch, tells the Federal Reserve Board to write rules barring a covered issuer from limiting a credit card to one network. A covered issuer is one with more than $100 billion in assets together with its affiliates.
The same list bars limiting a card to two or more networks if they share an owner or appear on the Board's list of excluded networks. Its third item bars limiting a card to "the 2 such networks that hold the 2 largest market shares."
That third item is a prohibition. An issuer that enables only Visa and Mastercard on a card breaks the rule, exactly as an issuer enabling only Visa would.
Every compliant card therefore carries at least one network outside the top two, and merchants gain the right to send traffic there. The Board must also bar issuers and networks from inhibiting a merchant that directs a transaction to any network able to process it and not on the excluded list.
Cards issued by the network itself or by a company under common ownership with it, the three party model American Express runs, fall outside the rules. The bill creates room for a third rail, and Visa and Mastercard can still share the same card.
The clause also expires if the market moves. Within three years of the rules taking effect, and at least every three years afterward, the Board must check whether the two largest networks have changed, and if they have, the top two prohibition ceases to apply.
The rule is written for the market as it stands today. An issuer that adds a third network complies with a clause that could later lapse. The review happens only after the rules take effect, so the first three years would use today's rankings, with no ranking change to test.
Timing is where the bill is weakest for anyone hoping for lower fees soon. The Board must prescribe the rules not later than one year after enactment, and they take effect 180 days after the final version.
One year is a deadline, not a minimum. If the Board uses all of it, that is about 545 days, roughly 18 months, from signature to any effect on interchange, so a bill signed in December 2026 would reach the market in June 2028.
A Board that finished in six months would put the rule into force around the end of 2027, and nothing in the bill stops it going faster. Getting a signature is the harder step.
The Senate's tentative schedule lists a state work period from October 5 to November 6, with the midterm elections on November 3 inside it. After the return in the week of November 9, the chamber is out again from November 11 to 13 and from November 23 to 27, then breaks on December 21.
That leaves about 22 weekdays, roughly four and a half weeks, covering November 9 and 10, November 16 to 20 and November 30 to December 18.
The new element this week is that the President and Vice President are both publicly behind the bill. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the bill has gained Trump as an ally.
The backing is older than it looks. Trump first voiced support in January, and Majority Leader John Thune told Punchbowl News that month that "my assumption is at some point it probably gets voted on."
On August 3 Trump repeated the support in a post endorsing Marshall's reelection bid, calling swipe fees a "ripoff," according to Payments Dive. Nine months after filing, the bill has not been voted on.
What happened when it first had a vehicle explains why. The Senate Agriculture Committee advanced the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, the crypto market structure bill, by 12 to 11 in late January.
Marshall, Durbin and Welch filed a modified swipe-fee bill as an amendment to the crypto market-structure bill. The Independent Community Bankers of America's account, dated 30 January, says they decided not to offer it "after facing opposition by the banking industry and leadership." The President's support was already public, and the Senate majority leader had said a vote was likely.
The sponsors still held the amendment back, and the bill remains in the Banking Committee, where it was referred.
An endorsement that arrives less than four weeks before an election, while the chamber is away, works as campaign material. It adds no floor time to the roughly 22 weekdays left after the return, and the Senate schedule used here is the tentative one the Senate published, which can change.
A markup in the Banking Committee would be the first sign that the calendar had moved.
Merchants face a different sequence. The routing right in the bill matters only when a network outside the issuer's affiliates is enabled on the card, which makes the card portfolio the bargaining chip long before the statute is.
A large merchant or acquirer with volume gets more from asking issuers to enable a third network voluntarily than from waiting for the Board to compel one. Passage comes first, then a year of rulemaking, then 180 days, and only then does anyone gain a routing choice that does not exist today.
The Senate returns the week of November 9 and, under its tentative schedule, leaves again on December 21. It will not record a vote on the bill, or on an amendment carrying its text, in the weeks between.