U.S. Democrats seek to speed up credit card rules

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. lawmakers plan to introduce legislation that would bring forward new regulations limiting credit card interest rates and fees by nearly three months.

The two Democrats said on Wednesday they will introduce legislation to advance the implementation date to December 1 for the regulations limiting credit card interest rates and fees.

U.S. Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Barney Frank said they will hold a press conference on Thursday to propose speeding up the full effect of the new credit card rules to December 1 from the current February 22, 2010 timetable.

The regulations were approved by Congress and signed into law earlier this year by President Barack Obama.

The new rules will sharply restrict credit card issuers' powers to raise interest rates on cardholders' existing balances, charge some types of fees and slap cardholders with unreasonable penalties.

Lawmakers have said they are unhappy with actions credit card companies have taken in advance of the implementation date, such as hiking fees and cutting customers' lines of credit.

Major credit card issuers to be affected include Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co, American Express Co and Capital One Financial Corp.

Financial firms are already responding to lawmaker pressure to ease penalties on their customers.

JPMorgan and Wells Fargo said on Wednesday they are eliminating some overdraft fees and trimming others, after Bank of America announced a similar move on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)