The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, chaired by Liberal MP David Coleman, yesterday tabled its third report on reforms of the Australian banking sector. It makes the case for forcing the issue on giving merchants the option to route sales through eftpos rather than Visa or MasterCard, and for mandating banks' participation in Comprehensive Credit Reporting. The report adds to changes previously recommended by the committee, many of which have been broadly adopted by the Government, or are in the process of being implemented - for example the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, a one-stop shop for consumer complaints. The Committee took the opportunity to re-iterate its achievements (primarily the introduction of the Banking Executive Accountability Regime, which will take effect in mid-2018 and convincing fellow Members to increase the ACCC's powers and resources to investigate competition issues in the setting of interest rates).  The Government has also adopted the committee's recommendations to establish an open data regime and change the regulatory requirement for bank start-ups in order to encourage more competition in the sector. In a media release spruiking the report, the Committee summarised its main recommendations to Government:  If the banks do not act by 1 April 2018, regulatory action should be taken to ensure that merchants have the choice of how to process "tap and go" payments on dual network cards.  At present merchants are forced to process these transactions through schemes such as Visa and MasterCard rather than eftpos.  It is estimated that this forced processing costs merchants hundreds of millions of dollars in additional annual fees at present; The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, as a part of its inquiry into residential mortgage products, should assess the repricing of interest-only mortgages that occurred in June 2017; The Government should introduce legislation to mandate the banks' participation in Comprehensive Credit Reporting as soon as possible; and The Attorney-General should review the major banks' threshold transaction reporting obligations in light of the issues identified in the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre's case against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.  Committee Chair David Coleman MP said "the Committee continues to hold the major banks to account during these regular hearings.  We look forward to the Government's response to the Committee's new recommendations."