The following content is sponsored by the Electronic Payments Coalition.
Walmart hopes you are already focused on holiday prep and not paying attention to what’s happening on Capitol Hill.
For years, Walmart and other megaretailers have lobbied senators and congressmen for favors. Walmart alone employs approximately 1.6 million people in the United States, and in their last quarter had revenue of over $160 billion. You can see why they have an outsized ability to influence elected officials.
Their latest request is to overhaul how credit card payments are routed during purchases. They’d like the Federal Reserve to implement new rules that favor big-box stores, and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and others are happy to oblige. Sen. Durbin introduced the “Credit Card Competition Act” this summer and is pushing it amongst his colleagues. He has even got Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas to sign-on. The bill will give unprecedented power to the federal government to control consumers’ credit card transactions. Right now, retailers and financial institutions have negotiated agreements about how payments operate, but this will upend all of that and force companies…
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