Massachusetts Credit Card Commission Closes Public Hearings, Moves Toward Final Report

LEGISLATURE — July 22, 2026 — Massachusetts credit card commission wraps public testimony ahead of final report. The Special Legislative Commission on the future of payments and sales transactions by credit card held its fifth and expected final public hearing Tuesday in Boston, with Senate Chair Paul Feeney presiding after House co-chair Representative Jamie Murphy was called away for a House floor vote. Witnesses spanning banking, restaurants, payment networks, and convenience stores clashed over whether a state interchange law would survive federal preemption — Kathleen Murphy of the Massachusetts Bankers Association warned that OCC rules would shield all but the roughly 22 percent of transactions handled by state-chartered community banks — while restaurant owners Jen Ziskin and Nancy Caswell pressed the case that charging interchange on sales tax and gratuity "was never ours in the first place." Keely McEwen of the Electronic Payments Coalition reported that 46 state-level swipe-fee bills have been defeated nationwide since 2025 without one becoming law, and that Colorado's governor recently vetoed a similar measure. Attorney Dan Swanson flagged a June 30 OCC interim final rule he called "terrible policy," and Brennan Duckett of the National Association of Convenience Stores cited Fed data showing merchants absorb 49.9 percent of debit card fraud losses — nearly double the financial institutions' share of 28.3 percent.