Lawmakers plan to re-up proposed legislation that would give merchants the power to process many Visa and Mastercard credit cards over different networks, the Wall Street Journal reported. The new bill is expected to be introduced as soon as this week with two additional co-sponsors, Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). A nearly identical bill was introduced last summer by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). That bill was referred to the Senate Banking Committee but didn’t get voted on. Vance, who joined the Senate this year, is a junior member of the committee. Currently, when a consumer pays with a credit card that has Visa or Mastercard listed on it, merchants generally have to route the payment through that network. The bill would mandate that merchants in many cases have the right to route payments through an unaffiliated network. That could lower the fees that merchants have to pay. Visa and Mastercard set and pocket network fees that merchants pay when consumers shop with the cards. They also set interchange fees that merchants pay to the banks that issue credit cards.
