As detailed by Reuters, which has seen the EU document, the European Commission, which focuses on implementing EU competition regulations, provided retailers and payment service providers with questionnaires about Visa and Mastercard in September 2024. The regulator allowed them to offer their answers by October 2024.
This is not the first time Visa and Mastercard have been under scrutiny from regulators, with a US judge recently declining the two corporations’ proposed USD 30 billion antitrust settlement. The settlement intended to solve litigation from 2005 over interchange fees that merchants pay for transactions processed via Mastercard and Visa. At that time, the decision could compel Visa and Mastercard to renegotiate the settlement with merchants or proceed to trial.
For a long time, Visa and Mastercard have been leading the payment cards market, with the two companies facing complaints from retailers about the fees they impose and the lack of transparency. These fees are charged by a card payment system operator for services related to the contribution in the card system.
EU regulators provide questionnaires to industry participants to develop antitrust cases, which, if pursued and successful, can lead to substantial fines, reaching as much as 10% of an organisation’s global proceeds. In the questionnaire on Visa and Mastercard, the regulators included a query on whether the number of fees in the EEA, the 27 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway, in which the retailer operates and the implementation of additional fees and deletion of existing ones negatively impacted their business between 2016 and 2023. Also, the EU regulators questioned retailers and payment service providers on whether they are included in discussions regarding the introduction and deletion of fees and fee increases. When asked to comment on the subjects of the document, EU antitrust regulators mentioned that the investigation is currently ongoing and there is no further observation to make.
Among the questions offered to retailers and payment service providers, the EU regulators included if they can negotiate scheme fees, processing fees, and innovation fees with Mastercard and Visa, and if these discussions are somehow conditioned by the receiving of products from the two companies, as well as if they are informed regarding the level of behavioural or compliance fees or fines collected by Visa and Mastercard and the reasoning provided to them.
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