Credit Card Fees Have Doubled for Small Businesses Since 2012. A Bill in Congress Could Change That - and the People Pushing It Are in Washington This Week.

Let's start with the math your payment processor doesn't put in bold.

When a customer pays you $100 with a credit card, you don't get $100. After interchange fees - the per-transaction fee set by Visa and Mastercard and collected by the card-issuing bank - you typically get somewhere between $96.50 and $98.50. The rest goes to the network and the bank.

That sounds like a small number. But it doesn't stay small. A restaurant processing $50,000 a month in card sales can lose $900 to $1,500 just in interchange. A retailer doing $200,000 a month could be paying $3,600 to $7,000 - or more, depending on the card mix. That's rent money.

And according to the National Federation of Independent Business, those fees have more than doubled since 2012.

The NFIB Fly-In Is Happening Right Now

From June 8 to 10, hundreds of small business owners are in Washington, D.C., meeting with lawmakers at the NFIB's annual Capitol Hill Fly-In. Two issues are on the agenda: permanently repealing the Beneficial Ownership Information reporting mandate, and reforming credit card swipe fees.

The vehicle for the second one is the Credit Card Competition Act (H.R. 7035/S. 3623), reintroduced in January 2026 with bipartisan support. Lead sponsor in the Senate: Roger Marshall of Kansas.

"Swipe fees have become one of the highest costs for business owners," said NFIB President Brad Close. "A bipartisan bill in Congress would provide options for small business owners to choose their credit card processing network, enabling credit card companies to compete for business and driving down fees."

What the Bill Would Actually Do

Right now, when a customer pays with a Visa card, that transaction runs on Visa's network - and only Visa's network. Visa sets the interchange fee. The issuing bank collects it. You pay it. You have no say.

The Credit Card Competition Act would change that by requiring large banks (those with more than $100 billion in assets) to enable at least one competing network to process their credit card transactions. That means if a customer swipes a Visa card issued by a big bank, you could route the transaction through a competing network - and that competition would theoretically push fees down.

Think of it as the debit card model applied to credit cards.

That's not a hypothetical. The Durbin Amendment of 2010 did exactly this for debit cards - required routing competition and capped debit interchange fees. According to the Federal Reserve, that change saved merchants roughly $9 billion per year. 92% of NFIB members say small businesses should have the right to choose among multiple credit card processing networks.

Why It Hasn't Passed Yet

Credit card interchange reform has been circling Congress for years. The banking industry and card networks have fought it at every step. Their argument: lower interchange fees reduce the rewards programs that consumers like, and may reduce access to credit.

That argument has kept the bill bottled up despite bipartisan support. The Credit Card Competition Act passed out of committee in a prior Congress but never made it to a floor vote.

State-level efforts have also run into walls. Illinois passed its own version - the Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, which would ban fees on the tax and tip portions of a transaction - but implementation was delayed until July 1, 2027 after banking groups challenged it in court and federal regulators issued preemption rules.

The NFIB also opposed a May 2026 interim final rule from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, arguing it would actually increase swipe fees for small businesses by blocking state laws from addressing the problem.

The Dollar Translation

Here's what "doubled since 2012" means in practice:

A business running $500,000 in annual card revenue that paid $7,500 in interchange fees in 2012 is now paying something closer to $15,000.
A restaurant or retailer doing $1 million in card revenue could be handing over $20,000 to $30,000 annually - money that doesn't show up as a line item on your P&L unless you're looking for it.

Most small business owners see this as a processing cost and treat it as a fixed cost of doing business. The NFIB is arguing it's not fixed at all - it's a policy choice that benefits card networks at the expense of merchants.

So What

If the Credit Card Competition Act passes, the direct effect would be routing competition on new credit card transactions, with potential savings depending on how aggressively competing networks price their fees. The bill does not cap fees directly - it creates competition and lets the market work.

If it doesn't pass this session, the issue doesn't go away. The NFIB has signaled it will keep pushing at both the federal and state level. And with Illinois setting a precedent (even a delayed one), more states are likely to try.

For now: if you're not tracking your effective payment processing rate, start. Divide your total monthly processing fees by your total card revenue. If that number is above 2.5%, you're paying above average and worth shopping around for a processor that offers better rates or routing options on cards where the issuer permits it.

The full text of the Credit Card Competition Act is available at nfib.com.

Priya Kapoor covers small business finance and economic data for The Useful Daily.

The Useful Daily