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I spent several years building Buoy Local, a small Maine company that helped independent businesses sell and manage gift cards. That work put me in the trenches with shop owners and taught me, in very concrete terms, how payments actually function and what swipe fees really cost them. I’ve since sold the company, but those lessons stayed with me. They’re why I’m urging the members of our federal delegation to oppose the Credit Card Competition Act.
I understand the appeal. Swipe fees can be a genuine frustration, and I heard about them constantly from the business owners I worked with. But this bill doesn’t address that frustration cleanly. What it does instead is reroute credit card transactions across competing payment networks, and not all of those networks carry the same fraud protection or reliability. When a payment goes sideways, it’s the business owner who absorbs it.
Most small businesses don’t have a back-office team to untangle disputes across multiple payment systems. They need transactions that are secure, consistent, and easy to reconcile. Complexity isn’t a minor inconvenience at that scale. It’s a real cost.
There’s another piece of this that often gets overlooked: rewards programs matter to customers. A lot of Maine households rely on cash back and points to stretch their budgets. Weaken those programs and people notice, and when they spend more carefully, local businesses notice too.
Fair fees matter. So does a payment system that small business owners can actually trust. I believe this bill puts both at risk. Please oppose it.
Benjamin Smith
Falmouth