The Credit Union National Association made sure that every lawmaker on Capitol Hill got this message Wednesday: America’s credit unions spend millions of dollars–without skipping a beat–to protect consumers from merchant data breaches by re-issuing cards, monitoring accounts and reimbursing customers for fraud.

CUNA called on merchants to start working with financial institutions now to implement the best solutions to secure the system and protect consumers from fraud and identity theft–even though these solutions may be costly.

That message to Congress came in the form of a CUNA rebuttal to a recent blog post by the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) in The Hill newspaper.

In CUNA’s Hill blog post Wednesday–which CUNA circulated to every federal lawmaker’s office– Executive Vice President of Government Affairs John Magill refutes mistaken claims NACS made about who covers costs of a merchant’s data breach: It is credit unions and other financial institutions.

“Merchants are not required to reimburse financial institutions for the cost of card re-issuance after a data breach. Nothing in the Visa and MasterCard network rules provide for merchants to cover the costs of card re-issuance.

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