It took cryptocurrency firms two tries to get the Senate to advance a plan they’ve long pursued to police stablecoins, a type of digital assets pegged to currencies like the dollar.
Now, a divisive policy fight over credit cards could derail the entire bill.
The retail and finance sectors have long clashed over legislation from Sens. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., that would target credit card swipe fees by encouraging more competition. Retailers say the bill would bring down prices for consumers; Visa and Mastercard, as well as banks and credit unions, say it would force them to cull customers’ rewards.
And critics of the proposal are fighting hard against a new push to attach it to the Senate’s stablecoin bill.
“It’s awful policy,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. If the swipe fee measure got attached, he added, “I’d go from being a co-sponsor to trying to figure out how to tank the [stablecoin] bill. It won’t be a surprise to my colleagues.”
The competing interests — and their deep pockets — have for years divided the Republican Party deeply enough to ensure the swipe fee bill never received a roll-call vote. In one example of the complex politics at play, Vice President JD Vance signed on to the legislation while he was a senator — but later privately told lobbyists he would not try to advance it.
Marshall filed his measure as an amendment to the Senate’s stablecoin bill on Tuesday. But it’s not at all clear that he will push for a floor vote. And Durbin said he wasn’t sure if the swipe fee plan would get 60 votes, since it’s never seen floor action before.
“We haven’t decided what to do. We’re still measuring twice, before we cut once,” Marshall told Semafor on Wednesday. He said he didn’t want to discuss the amendment further because he hadn’t decided how to approach it.
Now, the crypto industry is quietly lobbying its allies on the Hill to block the amendment from getting a vote. A few within the industry counter that if the swipe fee bill got attached through a simple-majority vote, that could spur more Democrats to support the bill.
Durbin, who opposes the bigger stablecoin bill, said adding the credit card amendment “puts me on the spot, doesn’t it?”
But the crypto bill doesn’t have much room to lose backing: 69 senators voted to advance it Wednesday, and 60 senators must vote to pass it. That makes most in the industry wary of scaring off Republican lawmakers like Tillis. In the House, backers are hoping Financial Services Chair French Hill, R-Ark., pushes the legislation through unchanged.
Hill is a vocal critic of Marshall and Durbin’s measure and doesn’t seem to be changing his mind any time soon: He told Punchbowl News in February that he is “this one is not one where I would be inclined to change my long-stated view.”
“We’re trying to keep this as clean and expedient as possible,” Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., one of the sponsors of the stablecoin bill, told Semafor Wednesday.
One crypto executive, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, put the swipe fee question another way: “Why would we put our hand in the woodchipper?”
Senate leadership expects votes on stablecoin amendments from both sides of the aisle in the interest of facilitating “as open an amendment process as possible,” a person familiar with the plans said.
But Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Majority Whip John Barrasso, told Semafor it was not yet clear whether Marshall’s amendment would be one of them.
Thune said the leading co-sponsors are “hearing out members and finding out what kind of amendment votes they want to get.” He said the effect of the amendment on the broader bill’s whip count was a “hypothetical.”
Still, the Senate is not expected to vote on the stablecoin proposal again until after lawmakers return from their Memorial Day recess. And that long break from the bill could allow the credit card fight to consume the crypto legislation.
“I don’t know if it’s coming for sure. The thing is … we may be done this week with the stablecoin bill,” sponsor Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told Semafor. “So the crazy thing is, it gives the credit card issue a lot of time to germinate over the break.”
Indeed, Marshall’s amendment proposal set off a maelstrom of lobbying Tuesday.
Merchant Payments Coalition’s Doug Kantor said in a statement that “it is time for Congress to deal with the hidden credit card fees driving up the prices of nearly everything we buy.”
Electronic Payments Coalition’s Executive Chairman Richard Hunt said in a statement that “trade groups backed by corporate mega-stores say they support crypto legislation — yet have been working behind the scenes to see the Durbin-Marshall mandates hung like an albatross around the bill’s neck.”
Banks also got involved Wednesday.
“We urge policymakers to oppose any efforts to attach the Durbin-Marshall bill to the GENIUS Act because of its harmful effects on consumers, small businesses, and banks of all sizes,” more than 50 trade associations, including the American Bankers Association, wrote in a letter to Thune and Schumer Wednesday, using the stablecoin bill’s formal name.
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Senate Republican chiefs of staff on Monday discussed the possibility that Marshall’s proposal gets a vote as an amendment to the stablecoin bill, Punchbowl reported.
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Retailers who back Marshall’s proposal urged senators to advance the stablecoin bill out of committee earlier this year, Payments Dive reported.
