America is moving away from cash. While exact numbers are uncertain—a recent Forbes article claimed that 70% of polled respondents stated they use cards most often, while a YouGov survey from earlier this year alleged that most Americans still primarily use cash—there’s a clear trend toward card and mobile payments that can be viewed across the country.
There are several reasons for this. Not only is using a card frequently easier than paying with cash, but cards can also come with other benefits, such as allowing the holder to accumulate points that they can exchange for goods and services.
However, there’s been some recent chatter that the credit card industry is about to change dramatically. Here’s what people are saying may happen.
What credit card event is happening on Nov. 19?
In a video with over 1 million views, TikTok user Jeremiah Knight (@baldnews_), who posts videos sharing recent news stories, alleges that “credit cards are going to change forever on Nov. 19.”
The reason for this, he says, is that the “Senate Judiciary Committee is going to be meeting about a duopoly of Visa and Mastercard.”
In short, many credit and almost all debit transactions in the United States are made using cards from one of these two companies. Each of these cards have “swipe fees” associated with them, which are fees charged to businesses for processing their cards. These typically range from 2 to 4%.
According to Knight, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be meeting on Nov. 19 in order to consider breaking up this duopoly, as he says “both parties want…to have a credit card competition act to bring in more credit cards and lower the fees, which would mean more money for every one of us.”
This is a slight misstatement, as credit card fees are generally charged to the business rather than the cardholder; however, there is a possibility that a reduction in swipe fees could result in lower prices for the consumer, should a business decide to make that change.
How will my credit cards be affected after Nov. 19?
In short, your card payments will not be affected on or after Nov. 19—at least, not yet.
As noted by PIRG, the meeting that is occurring on Nov. 19 is simply to discuss high credit card fees, relating this discussion to a bipartisan bill called the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) that is currently making its way through Congress.
According to PaymentsDive, this bill, if passed, “would require that banks issuing credit cards ensure that there is at least one card network available to merchants for routing transactions that is not one of the two industry heavyweights, Visa and Mastercard.”
While a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on this topic may indicate a greater focus on a certain area of interest, it does not necessarily mean that legislation will be passed. In fact, the CCCA was first introduced in 2022 by Senator Dick Durbin, but largely stalled out during the discussion process.
@baldnews_ #creditcard #debt #creditcarddebt #foryou ♬ Minimal for news / news suspense(1169746) – Hiraoka Kotaro
Commenters share their thoughts on credit card payments
In the comments section, users offered their views on swipe fees for credit card payments.
“Most ppl who don’t own a business don’t realize that mom and pops have to pay 2-4% credit card processing fees. Higher for Amex. That’s why cash is cheaper. Businesses bake cost into product,” explained a commenter.
“This isn’t a good thing; businesses won’t lower prices even if credit card fees were lower,” countered another. “We’re all deluded if we think this matters to the average person. This is going to hurt us more than help.”
“This isn’t good because — we will lose those phenomenal Airline / Hotel points. To those who pay their bills on time / early and never have interest this is not good,” stated a third.
The Daily Dot reached out to Knight via email.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
