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Airlines, airline unions, and commercial aircraft manufacturers sent a letter to Congress late Monday voicing their opposition to attaching the Durbin Marhsall credit card amendment to the GENIUS Act, a bill to regulate stablecoins.
The letter states that attaching the Durbin Marshall amendment to the GENIUS Act would impose “onerous, unnecessary regulations on business-to-business credit card transactions” and “negatively impact” consumers with airlines rewards cards, “airline workers” and “ultimately travel and tourism throughout the United States,” as the legislation would “lead to significantly fewer passengers and flights.”
The Durbin Marshall amendment is the 2025 version of the Credit Card Competition Act to be introduced in Congress. The CCCA would require large card issuers to offer at least two payment networks, other than Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., for routing credit card transactions to merchants. The GENIUS Act, or the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, passed a preliminary vote in the Senate, setting up a final vote on the legislation.
“The battle over Durbin Marshall tends to get cast as banks vs. retailers, which is an oversimplification, because this bill impacts a lot of other groups,” a spokesperson for the Electronic Payments Coalition says.
More than 31 million Americans hold airline travel reward cards and 57% of all frequent flier miles issued in 2023 were generated by airline credit card use, according to Airlines for America, which represents passenger and cargo airlines in the United States. In addition, consumers earned nearly 16 million trips on domestic airlines from points earned through use of an airline-branded credit card, while airline credit cardholders generated $25 billion in economic activity in 2023.
“Americans value and enjoy credit card rewards programs because they reward consumers for dollars that they would be spending no matter what,” the letter says. “Many may be unpleasantly surprised if Congress disrupts those programs.”
One reason helping fuel opposition of the Durbin Marshall amendment is the stipulation of a choice of networks beyond Visa and Mastercard can create potential data security problems.
“Have these alternative networks invested in security and cardholder protections like the Visa and Mastercard networks,” says the EPC spokesperson. “There are a lot of benefits and security that come from the investments Visa and Mastercard have made in their networks. Alternative networks are untested when it comes handling credit card transactions.”
Signatories of the letter also call for the Durbin Marshall amendment to go “through regular order,” including hearings and a markup at the Senate Banking Committee. Putting the bill through regular order “would allow a thorough examination of the complications surrounding the regulation of interchange fees, including the past success (or lack thereof) with debit cards in the U.S. and credit cards in other countries, and whether there are alternatives to addressing the concerns of merchants without having such a negative impact to airline consumers and workers,” the letter says.
While airlines and airline unions previously opposed the CCCA when it was introduced as a stand-alone bill, it is the first time commercial aircraft manufacturers have opposed the legislation, the EPC spokesperson adds. Aircraft manufacturers signing the letter include Airbus, General Electric Aerospace, The Boeing Corp., and RTX Corp., formerly Raytheon Technologies Corp.
