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EPC Continues to Fight for Repeal of Price Controls

| Electronic Payments Coalition

The Electronic Payments Coalition (EPC) promised to keep fighting for repeal of the Durbin amendment today and will continue to work with Congress to stop this failed policy.

“The House Financial Services Committee voted twice in back-to-back congresses to repeal the Durbin Amendment because members know this is a crony handout that has generated unearned billions for the Big Box retailers and heartburn for their customers,” said Molly Wilkinson, executive director of the EPC. “The Durbin price controls hurt consumers, community banks and credit unions and even small merchants. This is a bad policy, and we, the Electronic Payments Coalition, are committed to repealing it.”

Since the policy took effect in 2011, the special-interest Durbin amendment has allowed merchants to collect more than $42 billion they promised to pass along to their customers. In that time, merchants have raised prices while banks and credit unions have lost revenue used to serve their customers and members, respectively. The policy’s failures have been confirmed by multiple studies and consumer surveys over the past six years, underscoring the need to end the Durbin amendment.

Those failures are the reason two separate Congresses took action in the past year to repeal this policy, keeping the amendment in the spotlight and stressing its failures. In September 2016, the 114th Congress’s House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) passed the CHOICE Act of 2016, which included Durbin amendment repeal. In May, the HFSC of the 115th Congress voted once again to end the provision as part of CHOICE 2.0.

To learn more about the Durbin amendment, click here.

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