March 26, 2024 Last Edit: July 22, 2024
NFIB has advocated for credit card network competition.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 26, 2024) – The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s leading small business advocacy organization, issued the following statement from Vice President of Federal Government Relation Jeff Brabant regarding the Visa and Mastercard anti-trust settlement:
“We are pleased that Visa has finally recognized that their anti-competitive practices have caused ‘true pain points small businesses have identified.’ While this settlement is a step in the right direction and will provide a limited amount of short-term relief to small businesses, it does not solve the long-term anti-competitive rate-setting practices that are the root of this problem. As long as the credit card networks, Visa and Mastercard, get to set the interchange rates for every bank that issues a credit card, anti-competitive pricing will remain, and small businesses will continue to pay artificially high rates. Competition must be injected into the credit card marketplace to allow rates to be set by market forces, and that will only happen with the passage of the Credit Card Competition Act.”
NFIB supports the Credit Card Competition Act, which would allow small business owners to choose between multiple credit card network options. Ninety-two percent of NFIB members believe that small business owners should have the right to choose among multiple credit card processing networks.
NFIB is a member-driven organization advocating on behalf of small and independent businesses nationwide.