The claim - led by former financial services ombudsman Walter Merricks, who has instructed US-based law firm Quinn Emanuel - is to be filed under the new Consumer Rights Act 2015, which allows for collective damages claims.
It claims MasterCard set unlawfully high interchange fees - charged to stores when shoppers swipe their debit or credit cards - for 16 years, which were passed on to consumers in the form of inflated prices for good and services.
In 2014 the European Court of Justice declared that such fees were a violation of EU antitrust rules.On April 29 2015 the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted the Interchange Fee Regulation, and caps of 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards came into effect on December 9.
MasterCard said it disagrees with the basis of the claim.
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