CCCA Odds Collapse to 9%: Market Finally Prices Three Congresses of Failure

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Credit Card Routing Competition Odds Crash to 9%, But Was 36% Ever Real?

The Credit Card Competition Act has failed in three consecutive Congresses. It was stripped from two separate legislative vehicles in the current session alone. It has no scheduled committee markup, no floor vote, and no new co-sponsors since January. Yet one week ago, prediction markets priced the bill's passage at 36%.

That number is now 9%, a 12-percentage-point drop over three days in the "Which bills will become law in 2026?" event tracked on Kalshi and Polymarket. The move looks dramatic on a chart. In context, it is a correction to something closer to baseline reality. The anomaly was not the fall. The anomaly was the peak.

No legislative catalyst triggered this decline. No committee chairman issued a statement killing the bill. No whip count leaked showing insufficient votes. The drop is the absence of a catalyst catching up with a price that never had one. Kalshi currently prices Credit Card Routing Competition at 4%. Polymarket prices it at 14%. The 10-percentage-point spread between platforms reflects disagreement among trading populations, not ambiguity in the bill's legislative status. Both numbers sit well below the June peak, and both tell the same directional story.

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Three Congresses, Two Stripped Riders: The Credit Card Competition Act's Legislative Graveyard

The CCCA's failure is not a single data point. It is a pattern with specific, documented milestones across multiple sessions of Congress. Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) have championed versions of this bill since 2022. Each time, the legislation accumulated bipartisan co-sponsors, drew endorsements from merchant groups like the Food Industry Association and the National Grocers Association, and still died without a floor vote.

The current Congress has been no different. Sponsors attempted to attach the CCCA as a rider to the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act. On January 30, 2026, the Senate Agriculture Committee voted 12-11 to strip the amendment, advancing the underlying bill without it. Marshall had withdrawn the amendment before the vote under pressure from Senate leadership and the banking lobby. A second attempt to attach the CCCA to the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act failed on March 17 when the amendment was excluded entirely.

The structural opposition explains the pattern. In January 2026, eleven banking and credit union groups sent a joint letter to Congress urging rejection of the bill, citing threats to consumer rewards programs and credit access. Visa and Mastercard, which together control over 80% of the U.S. credit card network market, maintain one of the most well-funded lobbying operations in Washington. That opposition is not cyclical. It is permanent infrastructure.

The bill currently sits in the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs with no markup scheduled. Its House companion, H.R. 7035, introduced by Representative Lance Gooden (R-TX), is parked in the Committee on Financial Services with identical inactivity. Neither chamber has held a hearing on the legislation in 2026.

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What the June Spike Actually Was: Noise, Not Signal, in CCCA Prediction Markets

The path from 12% in late March to 36% in early June had no identifiable legislative cause. No committee advanced the bill. No leadership figure announced support for scheduling a vote. No must-pass vehicle emerged as a plausible host for the amendment. The spike was disconnected from every observable legislative input.

What would legitimately justify a 36% implied probability for the CCCA? At minimum, a committee markup or a confirmed attachment to a defense authorization or appropriations package moving through both chambers. A 36% price implies roughly one-in-three odds of navigating committee passage, a 60-vote Senate cloture threshold, House floor passage, conference reconciliation, and a presidential signature before December 31, 2026. None of those preconditions were met or approaching. The bill has not progressed beyond committee referral in either chamber.

The most likely explanation for the June spike is a combination of thin liquidity and retail sentiment driven by renewed media coverage of merchant fee disputes. Advocacy groups on both sides of the credit card routing debate have been active in 2026, and coverage of swipe fee costs can generate speculative interest from traders who conflate public salience with legislative probability. The period low of 6% and the swing back to 9% suggest the market is now finding a range that better reflects the bill's actual prospects.

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The Bull Case for CCCA: What Would Make 9% Wrong?

The strongest argument against the current price is that the CCCA has something most failed bills do not: a sitting president who has publicly endorsed it. President Trump's stated support for credit card routing competition is a genuine political asset. If the White House chose to make the CCCA a priority in a legislative package, the bill's odds would shift materially. Presidential pressure can override committee inertia.

Additionally, the bill retains bipartisan sponsorship. Senators Marshall and Durbin represent an unusual coalition. Representatives Gooden and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) provide the same cross-aisle pairing in the House. If a lame-duck session after the midterms created a window for bipartisan legislation, the CCCA could theoretically move as part of a broader deal.

These are real factors, and they prevent the bill from trading at zero. But presidential endorsement without presidential action is not a legislative pathway. Trump has not directed the White House legislative affairs team to push the bill, and no reporting suggests a strategy to attach it to must-pass legislation. Bipartisan sponsorship is necessary but not sufficient when the opposition includes the entire banking lobby and both Visa (V, trading at $327.24 as of June 18) and Mastercard maintain active campaigns against routing mandates.

The 9% price gives the CCCA roughly one-in-eleven odds of becoming law by December 31. That accounts for the nonzero possibility of a late-session surprise while respecting the bill's unbroken record of failure. Traders who bought at 36% were paying for a scenario with no evidence. Traders selling at 9% are pricing what three Congresses have shown.