WASHINGTON–Are credit unions supporting legislation that offers potential near-term benefits but also is a longer-term threat?
As the CU Daily has been reporting, the GENIUS Act is likely to be passed by the Senate this week and has had the support of credit unions, as it looks to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins, or cryptocurrency tied to an underlying asset, often the U.S. dollar.
But as the CU Daily has also reported, a number of large retailers, including Walmart and Amazon, in addition to travel-related companies, are exploring issuing their own stablecoins as a means of saving countless millions of dollars on payment card interchange fees.
Come Back to Bite?
So, are credit unions supporting a bill that ultimately could come back to bite them?
“That’s a concern,” acknowledged Jason Stverak, chief advocacy officer with the Defense Credit Union Council (DCUC). “We’ve expressed (that concern) in past letters (to Capitol Hill). Overall, it’s part of a revolution in the payment sector and that includes crypto and digital.”
Payments avenues are inevitably expanding, said Stverak, citing as an example the ability to make payment using bitcoin at Steak-n-Shake.
“We’ve been encouraging our members to start looking at what they need to do to ensure that they are In sync with their members in terms of how they are adapting and changing to the different environments,” he said. “(Retailers) are going to use whatever is most advantageous to them.”
