Sponsors (8)
The bill opens up routing choice to increase competition and potentially lower merchant costs and spur payment innovation, but it risks shifting costs back to consumers, imposes compliance costs on large issuers, and could create harms if networks are publicly labeled as national‑security risks.
Merchants — especially small businesses — and their customers (middle-class families) can route credit transactions to competing networks, which can lower processing fees and reduce costs for merchants and consumers.
Card issuers and payment ecosystem participants face increased competition and cannot enforce exclusive routing or restrictive authentication, encouraging innovation in payment services and potentially better products for banks, fintechs, and tech workers.
Cardholders and consumers (middle-class families) could ultimately face higher costs or reduced card benefits if payment networks raise other fees or cut rewards to offset lost interchange revenue.
Merchants and cardholders who rely on certain networks may be harmed if a public list of networks labeled as national-security risks stigmatizes or limits use of those networks.
Large covered issuers (assets > $100B) will face compliance and systems-upgrade costs to implement multi-network routing and updated authentication requirements.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs the Federal Reserve to ban exclusive network routing for covered credit cards, require open routing, and publish a public national‑security risk list of payment networks.
Official title: To amend the Electronic Fund Transfer Act to require the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve system to prescribe regulations relating to network competition in credit card transactions, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 13, 2026 by Lance Gooden · Last progress January 13, 2026
Prohibits covered card issuers and payment card networks from blocking or requiring exclusive routing of credit-card transactions and directs the Federal Reserve to write rules enforcing open routing for covered credit cards, with a narrow exception for three‑party payment systems. The Fed must also publish and regularly update a public list of card networks that pose national security risks or are owned/operated/sponsored by foreign states, review market-share references every three years, and issue final regulations within one year (effective 180 days after the rule is issued).