The New York Credit Union Association, along with CUNA, the AACUL, the American Bankers Association and state banking associations sent a letter to Congressional leadership outlining concerns over the Marshall-Durbin bill, or interchange bill, introduced earlier this month by Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

The letter emphasizes the negative impacts the bill would have on consumers, small businesses and financial institutions. “The impacts of this bill are clear: fewer options for consumers, greater threats to consumer data and privacy, weakened community banks and credit unions, and the disappearance of card rewards programs that families of all income levels use to stretch their budgets,” the letter states.

CUNA previously wrote to the legislators with concerns and issued an action alert last week resulting in more than 7,000 messages sent to Congress as of Monday afternoon, according to CUNA.

The letter states that the bill would allow merchants to route payments through an unaffiliated network and also:

• hands control of the nation’s credit card system to breach-prone merchants;
• would render existing cards inoperable; and
• guarantees profits and steers private contracts to favored card networks.

Further, the letter cites the Durbin Amendment’s interchange caps and the harm it inflicted on community banks and credit unions, despite their purported exclusion from the bill.