ICLE on Cardholders’ Rewards

Americans for Tax Reform – ICLE research on payment cards’ “rewards” programs was cited by Americans for Tax Reform in a recent blog post. You can read full piece here.

The CCCA would require the Federal Reserve to publish rules that would force credit cards issued in the U.S. to be enabled with at least two unaffiliated payment card networks. The ostensible goal of the bill is to let merchants dictate the networks to be used on consumers’ cards. This will result in a loss of interchange fee revenue, which is used to pay for frequent flyer programs. Enacting this bill could result in the termination of these programs—impacting approximately 30 million Americans with airline co-branded credit cards. According to data cited by the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), in terms of all types of rewards cards, “86% of credit cardholders have active rewards cards, including 77% of cardholders with a household income of less than $50,000.”