By Jason Stverak
Americans deserve straight answers about the price of gasoline. Families feel every increase immediately, and military households can feel it especially sharply when long commutes, permanent-change-of-station moves, training obligations, or life near an installation leave few transportation alternatives.
Yet advocates of the Durbin-Marshall credit card mandates are using higher pump prices and geopolitical instability to revive a familiar claim: interchange fees are a principal reason gasoline costs so much. That argument is politically convenient, but economically backward.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration identifies four primary components of retail gasoline prices: crude oil, taxes, refining costs and profits, and distribution and marketing. Crude oil is the largest component. Prices also move with refinery conditions, seasonal demand, transportation constraints, regional fuel requirements, and local competition. A card transaction does not set the world price of oil, restart a refinery, move gasoline through a pipeline, or establish fuel taxes. (U.S. Energy Information Administration)
When gasoline prices rise, the dollar value of a fill-up rises. Some payment expenses calculated as a percentage may therefore increase. But that is an effect of the higher underlying price, not its cause. Blaming the payment card for an oil-driven increase is like blaming the cash register for inflation.
There is another fact that deserves far more attention. Many gas stations have long posted different cash and credit prices. Consumer Reports says the difference commonly runs about 10 to 15 cents per gallon. Consider the math. At a 10-cent differential, an 11-gallon purchase costs the card customer an additional $1.10; anything beyond 11 gallons produces a larger difference. At 15 cents, an eight-gallon purchase costs $1.20 more, and a 12-gallon fill-up costs $1.80 more. (Consumer Reports)
Visa’s published U.S. consumer-credit schedule, effective April 18, 2026, lists eligible fuel interchange at 1.15% plus 25 cents, capped at $1.10. The posted cash-credit difference can therefore exceed the interchange amount on an ordinary fill-up. (Visa)
That does not mean every retailer is overcharging, nor does it mean interchange is the merchant’s only acceptance expense. Processors and acquiring institutions may impose additional charges. It does mean advocates should stop presenting the entire cash-credit difference as though it were automatically passed through to the card issuer. The interchange payment and the total merchant discount rate are not the same thing. (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond)
The debate also ignores what merchants receive in return. Card acceptance is not merely an expense line. It helps a station authorize payment, reduce nonpayment risk, process transactions quickly, and serve customers without requiring them to enter the store. By the National Association of Convenience Stores’ own account, approximately 80% of pump transactions involve debit or credit cards, while cash customers are commonly required to prepay to reduce drive-offs. (Convenience)
Automated fuel dispensers allow motorists to complete purchases without an attendant. That capability enables stations to sell fuel during unattended or overnight hours, expands the customers they can serve, and turns a closed counter into an open pump. For a service member reporting before dawn, a nurse driving home after a night shift, or a family traveling through a rural community, secure pay-at-the-pump access is not an abstraction. It can be the difference between obtaining fuel and being stranded. (Dover Fueling Solutions)
Sales Opportunities
Card acceptance also creates sales opportunities. A retailer that rejected the payment method used in most pump transactions would risk turning away substantial business. Faster, more convenient payments can improve throughput, give customers a choice, and support purchases at the pump and inside the store. Federal Reserve research has recognized faster checkout and reduced cash handling among the benefits merchants receive from accepting cards. (Convenience)
Most importantly, there is no guarantee that government-mandated reductions in payment revenue would appear as lower gasoline prices. The Credit Card Competition Act’s operative provisions address network access and transaction routing; the bill contains no requirement that retailers reduce pump prices or pass any savings to consumers. That promised pass-through is an assumption not an enforceable consumer protection.
History counsels skepticism. After the original Durbin Amendment capped debit interchange, a Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond survey found that 77.2% of merchants did not change prices, only 1.2% reduced them, and 21.6% increased them. Those findings do not prove that every future policy would produce the same result. They do, however, destroy the assumption that merchant savings automatically flow to consumers. (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond)
Congress should debate payment policy on its merits. It should address high gasoline prices through policies connected to energy supply, refining capacity, infrastructure, taxes, competition, and geopolitical risk. It should not use pain at the pump as advertising for a retail-industry routing mandate.
The number on the gasoline sign is determined long before a consumer taps, inserts, or swipes a card. Americans deserve solutions directed at the real causes of high fuel prices—not a convenient villain attached to the card reader.
Jason Stverak is Chief Advocacy Officer at the Defense Credit Union Council.