Dan Swanson is a consultant on payments policy and a former general counsel for the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Last month, problems with the cybersecurity software firm CrowdStrike caused computer system outages worldwide.   

An issue with such a widely-used service shows any business is vulnerable — and these outages can cause severe damage to systems that are critical to our economy, including transportation, healthcare and electronic payments.

The risk is real and so is the harm. So what can be done? 

An important step is to have backup systems, or redundancies, so operations can continue even if systems fail. Congress acted over a decade ago to address this risk in electronic payments through the 2010 Durbin Amendment, which requires all debit cards to have at least two networks enabled. This way, even if one network goes down, the other can be used to process payments and keep commerce flowing.

There have been instances where merchants were formally notified of Visa or Mastercard network outages, or similar disruptions of service. While some of these outages were short, or only affected limited geographic areas, they show that card networks can and do go down. But debit cards could still be used through an alternative network because of the backup system Congress built in.

The same backup system doesn’t apply to credit cards, and transactions could not be completed during some of these outages.

In the aftermath of the CrowdStrike outage, Congress and state lawmakers should look for opportunities to build backups and redundancies into critical online systems.

When it comes to credit card payments, bipartisan federal legislation is already drafted and ready for consideration. The Credit Card Competition Act would ensure that major bank credit cards always have at least one backup network, in addition to Visa or Mastercard, enabled and ready to use. This structure has worked well on U.S. debit cards for over a decade, and it is past time to start providing the same backup for credit card payments.  

As many Americans have noticed, groups representing the dominant card networks Visa and Mastercard and the big banks that issue credit cards have spent considerable resources lobbying and advertising against the CCCA. That’s because the legislation, by providing for a backup network on credit cards, would promote more marketplace competition between networks.  

For years, the dominant card networks have imposed significant fees that are deducted when credit card payments transmit across their networks, with part of those fees going to the card-issuing banks and part of the fees kept by the networks themselves.

These fees — higher than nearly every other country in the world — are lucrative for networks and banks, but they inflate the retail prices all consumers pay. Having another option available for credit card transactions would give networks an incentive to keep their transaction fees lower than their competitors. The dominant networks and big banks would rather avoid that kind of market competition.

Consumers, Main Street merchants and the American economy benefit from competition, and they benefit from backup systems too. The CCCA provides both, which is why it is supported by a broad range of consumer, business and labor groups as well as lawmakers across the political spectrum.

As recent events have shown, the risk of massive network outages is real, and the time to act to safeguard against such outages is now. Congress should take up and pass the CCCA without delay.

Clarification: This story has been updated to make clear that the Durbin Amendment required at least two networks be enabled for debit card payments.