Credit Card Competition Act returns with White House backing

The bill (S.3623 and H.R.7035, reintroduced in January 2026, with public support from Trump) still has not passed either chamber. If it passes, the Fed has a year to write rules, and issuers would need more time after that to turn on a second network. There is no market yet, and the timing is a real risk. Credit least-cost router: debit least-cost routing is already a standard feature from Adyen, Braintree, Nuvei, Fiserv, Shazam, and orchestrators such as Gr4vy and the open-source Hyperswitch. Each could add credit cards as a configuration change. Large merchants and their acquirers, the target customer, already use these tools. A new entrant probably cannot win on routing alone. The more defensible angle is an independent analytics layer that sits across all of a merchant's acquirers. It would measure what credit rerouting actually does, including issuer approval rates on each network, fraud and chargeback differences, and the loss of rewards or enhanced data. It would also feed that back into routing rules. Merchants may not trust acquirers who keep a share of the savings to do this neutrally. Issuer compliance kit: I found no dedicated product. But the work would almost certainly go through the card processors and the networks that would gain volume (Fiserv for STAR and Accel, FIS, TSYS, and Discover/Capital One). They have every reason to make onboarding free and easy. The customers are also few, roughly 30 banks above the $100 billion asset threshold, and they would mostly do this through processors they already use. A small consultancy or certification-testing niche may exist, but it looks like services work, not a venture-scale product. A more promising issuer-side idea might be help choosing which second network to adopt, or protecting interchange revenue, but that depends on the final rules. Sources: https://ktslaw.com/blog/consumer-financial-services/2026/1/credit-card-competition-act-of-2026 , https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/3623/text , https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/credit-card-competition-bill-wins-trump-support/809550/ , https://www.pymnts.com/legal/2026/trump-urges-congress-to-pass-credit-card-competition-act/ , https://www.digitaltransactions.net/magazine_articles/who-will-route-transactions/

• Adyen Intelligent Payment Routing (US debit)

  Already routes US debit transactions one by one between Visa/Mastercard and STAR, NYCE, PULSE and Accel based on cost, and reports authorization-rate results. Adyen says its pilot with eBay, Microsoft and others cut costs 26% on average and raised authorization rates 0.22%. These are Adyen's own figures. It is the obvious tool to extend to dual-network credit, and it sells to the same large merchants.

• Hyperswitch (Juspay) Least Cost Routing

  Open-source payment orchestration with a least-cost routing engine. It weighs network fees, interchange, ticket size and issuer type, and can combine cost with auth-rate routing. Today it covers US debit only (STAR, Pulse, NYCE, Accel through Adyen). Because it is open source, a credit version would be cheap for anyone to build.

• Nuvei PINless debit and least-cost routing

  An acquirer that added least-cost routing and PINless debit to its US product. It claims routing can raise approval rates by up to 3.5 points. This is one of several acquirers that already sell cost-based routing as a feature.

• PayPal Braintree Optimized Debit Routing

  A debit least-cost routing feature built into the processor. It picks the network based on amount, whether the payment is recurring, and merchant category (MCC). It is limited to US-issued debit cards with STAR, NYCE, PULSE or ACCEL on them.

• Gr4vy payment orchestration

  An orchestration platform that markets least-cost routing for dual-network cards, so far mainly debit, including Australian eftpos. This is the kind of vendor that would add credit routing if the bill passes.

• Shazam routing optimization

  A debit network and processor that sells least-cost routing to merchants while promising to keep approval rates up.

• Fiserv (STAR and Accel networks)

  Fiserv has said publicly that STAR and Accel could move into credit if the bill passes. It owns both networks, processes for issuers and acquires for merchants. That makes it the most likely default provider of both the second network and the work of turning it on for issuers. Analysts say Fiserv and FIS could build the merchant routing with very little effort.

• Capital One / Discover network

  Discover is the most credible non-Visa, non-Mastercard second credit network, and Capital One is moving cards onto it. Any issuer that adds Discover as its second network would deal with Discover's own onboarding and certification. That shrinks the market for a third-party compliance kit.

Checked 2026-10-11