On October 2nd, America’s Credit Unions (ACU) submitted a letter to both members of the House Armed Service Committee and the Senate’s Committee on Armed Services regarding potential amendments to the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. 

The letter, penned by ACU and signed by over 30 credit union leagues nationwide urged recipients to “reject amendments in areas that stand to place new burdens and hardships on our nation’s credit unions or that threaten the ability of our nation’s defense credit unions to serve the men and women of America’s armed services and our nation’s veterans.”

With that goal in mind, ACU outlined three main subjects it wished the committee to oppose: expanding interchange price gaps, adding amendments impacting military banking, and adding any amendments impacting credit union liability for electronic payments.

On the subject of interchange price gaps, the letter argued that attaching the Credit Card Competition Act to the NDAA should be avoided as the Act was nothing more than a “bailout for big box retailers” that would only harm smaller financial institutions and would “function as a backdoor price control on credit card transactions and would affect financial institutions of all sizes, regardless of the proposed exemption, and could greatly increase fraud costs as merchants select cheaper but less secure networks to process transactions.”

As for military banking, ACU claimed that credit unions functioned well on military bases and that adding any changes or amendments to the bill to govern these financial institutions was unnecessary. What specific changes might be proposed, it did not say.

“Our organizations strongly support credit unions on military bases, because we believe that they are the best source for safe, affordable financial services for our men and women in uniform, but we also believe that Congressional action at this point is unnecessary.”

Finally, regarding credit union liability for electronic payments, ACU noted that it “strongly opposed” the Protecting Consumers from Payment Scams Act, claiming that credit unions were already bearing large expenses due to payments-related fraud and that expanding the limit would harm smaller institutions. Instead, it urged them to find ways of increasing consumer awareness and education as well as seeking out means to prevent fraud before it happens.