Rap Impresario Simmons Wins Exemption on Prepaid Debit-Card Fee

It was surely the only time that lawmakers hammering out the financial-regulation bill were lobbied by a man wearing a hoodie and a New York Yankees baseball hat. That’s how Russell Simmons showed up on Capitol Hill earlier this month to fight a proposal to cap the fees retailers pay banks to process debit-card payments.

Simmons, best known for his Phat Farm clothing line and Def Jam hip-hop music label, is also the owner of UniRush, a Cincinnati-based company that sells a prepaid Visa debit card called RushCard, with about 2.5 million users. Simmons has persuaded lawmakers to exempt his business from a measure that would shift more of the cost of debit-card processing from retailers to the banks, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its June 28 issue.