Two crypto senators sign on to interchange reform, and the $100B routing mandate gets real

Senators Bernie Moreno (R-OH) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) have cosponsored the Credit Card Competition Act (S. 3623), joining Senator Angus King (I-ME) on a bill whose core requirement is that banks with more than $100B in assets enable at least two unaffiliated payment networks on their credit cards ^[1][2]. That moves interchange from a standing merchant grievance to a bill with a coalition that is genuinely awkward to whip against, and it puts a specific engineering obligation on the table for the largest issuers.

The roster now runs through Dick Durbin (D-IL), Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Peter Welch (D-VT), who were on the bill before Moreno, Lummis and King signed on ^[3]. That is six named senators: three Republicans, two Democrats and one independent ^[1]. The bill was reintroduced in January 2026 ^[4], and former President Trump endorsed it before this latest round of cosponsors arrived ^[5]. Crypto Briefing, relaying Payments Dive, dates the Moreno and Lummis cosponsorships to early August without stating the year, so the sequencing is worth confirming before anyone builds a legislative calendar on it ^[1].

The mechanism is worth reading literally. Most credit cards today route through either Visa or Mastercard, which is the source of those two companies' pricing power ^[6]. Under the bill, merchants would be able to route through competing networks, which is the theory of the case for lower per-swipe fees ^[7]. For a bank above the threshold, that is not a pricing negotiation. It is issuance, BIN configuration, authorisation plumbing and dispute handling against a second network, on cards that currently have one.

Merchant groups are predictably in favour: the Merchants Payments Coalition and the National Association of Convenience Stores have both voiced support, framing the bill as a competitive correction in a market tilted toward the largest institutions ^[8]. Visa, Mastercard and the largest card-issuing banks oppose it ^[9], arguing that interchange funds rewards programmes and that cheaper routing would starve the cashback and points economics that banks use to sell cards ^[10]. Credit unions have also objected, warning that reduced interchange revenue would hurt smaller institutions that rely on those fees ^[11]. On the face of the text they are outside it, since only banks above $100B in assets carry the routing mandate ^[12], but critics argue the downstream effects on fee structures spread past the threshold anyway ^[13].

The politics are the interesting part. Both Moreno and Lummis have spent political capital on crypto legislation, particularly the CLARITY Act on digital asset market structure ^[14], and reports have surfaced of tension between the two senators and the banking industry over delays to that bill ^[15]. The source does not claim the cosponsorship is retaliation, only that it leaves both senators pressing large banks on two fronts at once ^[16].

What to watch: whether any further Republicans attach themselves, since the marginal Republican signature is what makes this different from prior attempts; whether the $100B threshold survives negotiation intact, because that number is where the compliance cost lands; and whether large issuers begin scoping dual-network issuance as contingency work rather than waiting for a floor vote.