Discover, through its Pulse Network unit, has made the accusation that, in order to maintain its monopoly, Visa has undertaken a series of illegal actions that undermine competition, thus harming rival debit networks, merchants, acquirers, card issuers, and consumers.
The lawsuit alleges that Visa has a long history of making sure that PIN debit does not predominate, including undertaking illegal behavior to fend off competitive threats to its debit network services monopoly. In the petition, Discover said that Visa is offering economic incentives to merchants to choose the Visa network for transactions.
Discover is challenging a Visa rule that requires financial issuers of Visa signature debit cards to also include Visa’s PIN services instead of allowing other PIN networks like Pulse to compete for that business.
Pulse requires its debit cardholders to authorize transactions with a personal identification number (PIN). Most Visa transactions use customer signature.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now
We welcome comments that add value to the discussion. We attempt to block comments that use offensive language or appear to be spam, and our editors frequently review the comments to ensure they are appropriate. If you see a comment that you believe is inappropriate to the discussion, you can bring it to our attention by using the report abuse links. As the comments are written and submitted by visitors of the The Paypers website, they in no way represent the opinion of The Paypers.