WASHINGTON—The approval of Capital One to acquire Discover may have met with regulatory approval, but one group said passage of the Credit Card Competition Act—which credit unions oppose–is still needed reduce the billions of dollars being charged to merchants in swipe fees.

“Visa and Mastercard dominate the credit card market and the Capital One-Discover merger won’t change anything about that,” Doug Kaner, Merchants Payments Coalition Executive Committee member and National Association of Convenience Stores general counsel, said in a statement. “With Visa and Mastercard controlling more than 80% of the market and price-fixing swipe fees on behalf of each of their banks, there is no competition on swipe fees merchants are charged. Discover is only 3.5% of the credit card network market now and Capital One-Discover combined will only be 3.5% of the credit card network market after the merger is done. Nothing there helps at all with the swipe fee problem.”

According to the MPC, while Capital One plans to switch its debit cards to the Discover brand and Discover’s Pulse network, Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank last year said the bank plans to continue to “partner with Visa and Mastercard” for its credit cards, citing “strong relationships … that go back to our founding.”

Market Share

Without Discover even trying to challenge Visa and Mastercard’s market dominance, Discover would continue to have only 3.%-5% of the credit card market by purchase volume, compared with almost 80% for Visa and Mastercard, MPC said.

The CCCA would require banks with at least $100 billion in assets to enable cards they issue to be processed over at least two unaffiliated networks – Visa or Mastercard plus a competitor like NYCE, Star or Shazam.