Dear Sen. Katie Britt,
I want to share a perspective with you not as a policy professional, but as a small business owner here in Montgomery.
You and your staff have visited Prevail Coffee several times over the years, so you have seen firsthand the kind of community-centered business we have built. What many people do not realize is that one of the largest impediments to the growth – if not survival – of a small, community-focused business like ours is not payroll, rent, or even the record-high coffee prices we've recently experienced.
It's payment processing fees.
If "credit card processing fees" were an employee at Prevail, they would be the highest paid employee on our payroll.
Every transaction takes a cut, and those cuts bleed. For small businesses operating on tight margins, the cost adds up quickly.
This is not just an Alabama problem. Across America, billions of dollars are extracted from local communities and directed into highly consolidated financial networks. The average profit margin for a coffee shop is a meager 2.5%, a number that's likely lower for smaller, independent cafés. Meanwhile the average credit card processing fee for the same market segment is over 3.5%. Banks and card networks are making money while community businesses die. This is why I care so deeply about getting stablecoin and crypto policy right.
I understand and respect the concerns around financial stability, deposit flight, consumer protection, and systemic risk. Those concerns are real. But I also believe the current legislative framework, bolstered by the long-negotiated Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise, already prudently addresses these risks through reserve requirements, transparency standards, and clear regulatory frameworks.
My concern is that some of the largest financial incumbents are using those legitimate concerns to push for even tighter restrictions that don't meaningfully add more stability to the system, but instead protect their fee revenue and market control. This is not the American way.
Free markets and healthy competition create the best outcomes, not regulatory capture and legislative moats.
Programmable money – crypto and stablecoin infrastructure – not only creates the possibility of faster payments and lower transaction costs, but more importantly, it creates new ways for communities and local businesses to keep more value circulating locally instead of being extracted by Manhattan-based intermediaries. The conversation goes beyond "yield." Local economies desperately need the activity-based incentive mechanisms of the current text to re-home billions of dollars to our local Alabama economies and help our small businesses move from surviving to thriving. Changing the current text denies small businesses a powerful tool before it can ever reach their hands.
You know firsthand the challenges we've faced building what we've built in Montgomery. I have fought tooth and nail for an American dream that is dying. I have persisted, not because it is lucrative, but because it is good and right to do so, and I believe that our community is worth fighting for. After 15 years of working, scrapping, and fighting to make payroll and rent each month, we've accomplished something everyone told us was impossible. We created a retail-facing brand in Montgomery and exported it to larger markets like Atlanta and Birmingham.
However, like most "successful" small businesses, we're barely scraping by financially. Meanwhile, we are on pace to pay out over $100,000 in fees to banks and card networks for a service that carries a near-zero cost on stablecoin payment rails. In order to move a meaningful number of customers to these rails, incentive structures like the rewards laid out in the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise are essential. This is our path to move from a model based on extraction to one built on coordination and mutual benefit.
I believe America has an opportunity to lead here responsibly. We can create smart guardrails without shutting down innovation that could genuinely help Main Street communities thrive again.
I have nothing against banks. I love our community banking partners; they are vital to local economic health. And contrary to popular narratives, the current market structure framework will actually open up opportunities to bolster community bank deposits, as those deposits are approved backing assets under the GENIUS Act. I am already in conversations with several community banks and trust companies here locally to do just that.
If we get this right, we can win together. You know those aren't just words for me. That sentiment is our ethos. Thousands have walked through the doors of Prevail, from all over the world, and they are greeted by the same message: "Together We Prevail." All I want are the tools to build meaningful things together. Our Montgomery community deserves that. Alabama deserves that. America deserves that.
Senator, I encourage you and your team to continue engaging not only with large financial institutions, but also with the small businesses and local communities who live with the costs of the current system every single day. We aren't asking for the regulatory moat for which the banks are asking. We are simply asking for a fighting chance.
Wade Preston is the Co-Founder of Prevail Coffee, a Montgomery-based specialty coffee roaster and café brand with locations across Alabama and Georgia.
