Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON — Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., will hold a long-awaited hearing on tolling legislation.

However, executives from Visa and Mastercard, the two card networks most affected by the bill, were not listed to attend as of Tuesday afternoon. The hearing, which will take place on November 19, will be held by the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Durbin is the chairman and Marshall is the ranking member.

The Credit Card Competition Act has lingered in Congress for years, raising bipartisan co-owners including — at least at one point — vice president-elect Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio. However, it has made no gains for months, despite multiple opportunities to attach it to binding legislation over the past year, including defense spending and government funding packages.

It’s unclear whether Vance supports the ideas in the bill or whether he would have any influence in the incoming Trump administration on credit card issues. But Trump himself proposed a 10 percent rate cap plan for credit cards during the campaign, suggesting the new administration may be open to changes in how the credit card landscape works.

Other populist Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., have signed on to the bill, suggesting it could be acceptable to the growing ranks of populist Republicans who will be sworn in in Washington next year.

“For years, Visa and Mastercard have taken advantage of their duopoly in the credit market to impose exorbitant fees on small merchants and retailers,” Hawley said in a statement earlier this year. “This legislation will grant Main Street relief from Wall Street’s exorbitant business practices.”

The bill, the Credit Card Competition Act, would require credit cards issued by banks with more than $100 billion in assets to offer merchants a choice between two unaffiliated card networks, at least one of which cannot be Visa or Mastercard.

While Durbin and Marshall made a show of inviting executives from the two card networks, neither is listed as attending the hearing.

“The card industry, on the other hand, wants to hide the facts and pretend the problem doesn’t exist,” Doug Kantor, executive committee member of the Merchant Payments Coalition and general counsel of the National Retail Association, said in a statement. . “That’s why the CEOs of Visa and Mastercard refused to appear at a hearing and fought to avoid hearings or votes on legislation to bring much-needed competition to the damaged payments market.”

Electronic Payments Coalition President Richard Hunt said the committee should instead hold retailers “accountable for failing to pass on savings to consumers when Congress passed legislation to fix Americans’ debit card prices.”

“This hearing smacks of what it is, an 11th-hour attempt to fulfill promises made to some of their biggest donors,” he said in a statement. “The facts are clear. These proposed credit card mandates will hurt consumers, hurt small businesses, and hurt the local financial institutions that communities across the country rely on.”

The bill, in its current form, is still unlikely to become law, but it could be a starting point for Republicans to consider as they take up a tax bill to address the expiring tax cuts that Trump signed them in 2017.