I'm Anthony Brooks in for Magna Tucker-Bardi and this is on point.

Millions of Americans love their credit card perks.

Benefits like cash back and points for air travel.

But it turns out those benefits aren't free. The big credit card companies

charge merchants swipe fees to pay for them, and the merchants pass the costs along to you.

Visa and Mastercard control most of this market, which critics call an anti-competitive

duopoly. A push in Congress seeks to change that, which could help consumers but also

end or at least reduce all those points.

Now we're going to get to that in a moment, but first let's meet Ben Williams of Provincetown, Massachusetts.

He's one of those Americans who loves his credit card points.

Getting into the credit card kind of miles and points game has let me go to so many places

and so many places I couldn't have imagined going flying all over the world

traveling over a million miles seeing dozens of countries meeting all kinds of incredible people

and having the most wonderful opportunities and in general not having to pay for it.

Ben's credit card points journey began back in 2011 with a trip to India.

Yeah, so after that first trip and seeing how quickly you could earn points through travel and through spending on these credit cards and then signing up for more credit cards and seeing how you can get more points that way, it does become a little bit of an obsession.

You start to see not just ways to get points, but ways to spend them most efficiently.

So it surprises and probably troublesome people to hear that I have I have 19 credit cards at the moment.

Each of them provides different types of benefits.

Most of those cards I would say it's certainly points

earning benefits so lots of these cards come with other perks designed to kind of

keep you hooked so maybe one particular card gives you lounge access and you want to be able to rest in the

...