WASHINGTON – The Merchants Payments Coalition opposes Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s proposal to allow more price-fixing of debit-card swipe fees. Reform of the fees has helped consumers save nearly $6 billion a year and supported about 37,000 jobs each year since the reforms went into effect in late 2011.

Hensarling (R-TX), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, announced plans to repeal swipe-fee reform and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. “The Hensarling proposal would promote more price-fixing and detract from the few market forces that were actually created on debit-card fees,” said Douglas Kantor, counsel to the Merchants Payments Coalition, which fights for a more transparent and free market in swipe fees.

“It is unfortunate that the chairman’s proposal would undermine the free market and instead support price-fixing that benefits the largest of the largest banks and threatens consumers, merchants and the entire economy,” he said.

Debit-card reform was a first step toward introducing free market principles into this uncompetitive market set by Visa and MasterCard. Swipe fees on debit and credit cards are many retailers’ second-largest operating cost, behind labor. High fees threaten small retailers with failure and keep merchants from hiring and expanding, slowing the entire economy.

Exorbitant swipe fees mean consumers also pay higher prices, which especially hurt the poor. American merchants and consumers still pay the highest swipe fees in the world on debit and credit cards, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Hensarling’s proposal would make American merchants and consumers worse-off than their counterparts almost everywhere else in the world.

Last month, more than 140 national and state retail trade associations—including NACS and many of the state associations representing the industry—signed a letter asking Chairman Hensarling to protect debit swipe fee reforms. And it’s critical that the c-store industry continues to voice its concerns to Congress.

To contact your member of Congress today, to voice opposition to a repeal of debit swipe fee reform, please click here.