It’s CCCA Times Two As Congress Drops an Attachment Effort

Plans to attach an amended version of the Credit Card Competition Act to a cryptocurrency-infrastructure bill were shelved Thursday, effectively leaving two versions of the bill floating around Congress.

The CCCA was amended late last week to include a provision that called for enforcement of the CCCA under antitrust law, which can be enforced by federal agencies, such as the Department of Justice, as well as by state attorneys general. The bill’s sponsors viewed the antitrust provision as a way to make the CCCA a better fit for the Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act, which has antitrust implications.

The CCCA seeks to moderate the fees merchants pay for credit card acceptance by requiring that sellers have at least two network choices to route transactions.

The aim of amending the CCCA was to avoid the prospect that members of the Agriculture Committee, which is debating the Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act, would argue the CCCA should fall under the purview of the Senate Banking Committee, which has debated prior versions of the CCCA, says Doug Kantor, an executive committee member at the Merchants Payment Council and general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores. 

“[CCCA sponsors] Durbin and Marshall have always said they will seize any opportunity to try and get the bill passed, and [attaching it] looked like a good opportunity,” Kantor says. Efforts to attach the CCCA to the Genius Act failed last year.

Why the CCCA failed to attach to the latest crypto legislation remains unclear. The decision was reportedly made after the Trump administration asked CCCA sponsors not to attach the CCCA to the Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act. That request was made so the bill would not have any perceived baggage that could prevent its passage. In exchange, the Trump administration reportedly promised future support for the CCCA. 

These developments leave two versions of the CCCA—one with an antitrust provision and one without. The version without an antitrust provision was reintroduced earlier this month after President Trump voiced support for the legislation.

Two versions of the bill is problematic, as it creates uncertainty about the direction of the proposed legislation, observers say. “Which version of the CCCA is the merchant community supporting, we’d like to know?” says Richard Hunt, executive chairman of the Electronic Payments Coalition, says in a statement. “This was a last-minute rewrite of the CCCA that Sen. Durbin re-introduced in the Senate earlier this month. Not knowing which version of the bill merchants support is making a bad situation worse.”

Hunt adds that Sen. Durbin made last-minute changes to the Durbin amendment to get it passed. “This is a significant change at the last minute to the CCCA and is typical of Durbin,” Hunt says. Durbin’s and Marshall’s offices did not respond to requests for comment about which path the CCCA will take.

One of the concerns payments experts have over the antitrust provision is that the state attorneys general are viewed as not being as impartial as the Federal Reserve with regard to enforcement. “The Fed is seen as more neutral when it comes to enforcement, whereas state attorneys general are often viewed as partisan, which raises concerns they would be more aggressive with enforcement, which [in turn] would lead to more lawsuits [against the payments industry],” says Eric Grover, principal at Intrepid Ventures.

Grover says some CCCA supporters feel the Fed has not been aggressive enough about reining in credit card swipe fees, which merchants define as interchange and network fees.

When asked about the CCCA late Thursday during Visa Inc.’s 2026 fiscal first-quarter earnings call, Visa chief executive Ryan McInerney decried the legislation as harmful and unnecessary. The bill “has far-reaching consequences at a time when the economy doesn’t need them,” McInerney told analysts.

McInerney added the bill, if it became law, would lead to less innovation in the payments industry. Visa is working to educate members of Congress about why the current payment industry model works and that there is no need for government intervention, he said.