WASHINGTON – Members of Congress and White House officials may have been taken aback this week when representatives of credit unions and banks came to jointly lobby them against a proposed bill regarding card interchange fees.
Credit union and bank officials from the Capital region, as well as lobbyists for MasterCard and Visa, are among the 30 representatives scheduled to meet with leaders in the House and Senate and at the White House over the next two days, according to John Magill, chief lobbyist for CUNA.
CUNA and NAFCU have joined bankers and credit card companies in an Electronic Payments Coalition that is fighting bills to allow large retailers to negotiate their own fees with the card companies.
The stakes are the same for credit unions and banks, who don’t want to see the government regulate the $42 billion-a-year interchange fees market. Credit unions earned more than $3 billion in interchange fees last year.
The House Judiciary Committee next week is expected to vote on a bill that would enable retailers to negotiate their own fees with card companies and have those fees ratified by a government panel. A similar bill recently was introduced in the Senate.
