The following content is sponsored by the Electronic Payments Coalition.
Financial fraud is on the rise. Thousands of criminals work day-and-night to try to get your credit card information and personal information. Hackers in China, Russia, and a host of other countries have realized how lucrative it is to gain someone’s financial information and quickly make purchases before it’s shut down. It’s why card networks, banks, and credit unions have invested hundreds of millions in tracking and trying to prevent fraud.
But, in a surprise to no one, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois doesn’t really care. His latest bill will put Americans at greater risk of being hacked and exposed to foreign payment networks. Sen. Durbin for years has done the bidding of Walmart and Target, who would prefer not to run payments over secure, more expensive networks, but would rather route customer’s payments overseas which is much cheaper but also way less secure.
But Walmart and Target can’t just do this on their own. They need a new law that allows the Federal Reserve to control how payments are processed so that they can ignore the current requirements of brand-name cards like Visa and Mastercard. They are working hard to lobby senators on the left and right to do them this favor. What they’re leaving out of their lobbying pitch is that it will put American consumers at risk.
