With proposals aimed at controlling merchants’ costs for accepting credit cards having re-emerged in Congress, research has been emerging on both sides of the issue this summer as advocates for sellers and card issuers compete to influence any eventual legislation. The latest thrust appeared Monday with a research report arguing …

With the Covid-19 pandemic still imposing a huge financial weight on the nation’s small businesses and families, many legislators are understandably eager to pursue policies they feel will ease that burden. But lawmakers must be careful that they are looking at policies that really will help. Unfortunately, some sectors—in this …

The Durbin Amendment’s debit card interchange price cap took effect six years ago this month, prompting a merchant group to celebrate the occasion and claim the measure has saved consumers and merchants $48 billion. But a lobbying group of payment networks and banks derided those savings estimates and once again …

No law in the history of electronic payments has had more impact—or stirred more controversy—than Sen. Durbin’s debit card rules. With emotions running high, will it survive the next half decade? In 2010, the U.S. Congress succeeded in doing something other Western nations had long since done but had always …

• While House Republicans have stripped from the Financial Choice Act a provision that would have repealed the Durbin Amendment, the effort to get rid of the law’s debit-interchange caps and routing rules is still alive. As the House voted to pass the Act, a trio of Congressmen spoke in the House on Thursday …

• U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C., a former retailer, delivered a speech in the House of Representatives in favor of repealing the Durbin Amendment, drawing praise from the Electronic Payments Coalition, a lobbying group for banks and card networks. The House is considering H.R. 10, the Financial Choice Act, which would overhaul …

• The National Retail Federation on Friday launched a multimedia advertising campaign urging the House of Representatives to protect the Durbin Amendment. The campaign, which includes radio commercials targeting the districts of key Congressmen who have expressed support for repealing Durbin, comes as the House prepares to take up the Financial …

Retailers organized by the National Retail Federation and the Merchants Payments Coalition are scheduled to descend on Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to urge Congress to preserve the Durbin Amendment within the ever-controversial Dodd-Frank Act. One close observer of the political and banking scenes, however, believes the amendment will survive despite …