master card Consumer advocates have also reportedly reached an agreement in principle to resolve a long-running UK lawsuit over card fees.
with the company walter merricks They announced that they had agreed to settle the case at a hearing in a British court on Tuesday (December 3). Competition Appeal Court (CAT), Reuters reported Tuesday.
The settlement requires CAT approval, the report said.
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement in principle to shelve this matter,” a Mastercard spokesperson said in a statement.
Merricks said in his report: “After nearly nine years of litigation with Mastercard, we are very pleased that we have reached a settlement that we believe will provide meaningful compensation to class participants who choose to participate in the distribution of damages.”
The lawsuit was brought in 2016 by Merricks, a former financial ombudsman, with the assistance of a law firm. quinn emmanuel. The lawsuit claimed the card fees were anticompetitive.
The lawsuit accuses Mastercard of overcharging nearly 60 million UK residents over a 16-year period.
Merricks said the company charges exorbitant “exchange fees” (fees that retailers pay to credit card companies when consumers make purchases with credit cards) and that those fees are lost in the form of higher retail prices. He claimed that the charges had been transferred to someone else.
Mastercard countered that consumers receive valuable benefits from its payment technology.
A court ruling in December 2020 allowed the case to proceed, making it the first major case to proceed under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which punishes anti-competitive conduct. This stems from a 2007 ruling by the European Commission (EC) that found Mastercard's interchange fees violated competition law.
Currency exchange fees have been similarly challenged in the United States, with critics saying at a Senate hearing on November 19 that exchange fees burden consumers and businesses and lead to higher prices charged for goods and services. denounced.
executives from visa And Mastercard believes the payments landscape is competitive, and the size and scale of its network helps it deliver value to consumers and businesses, including innovation that benefits all stakeholders. he argued.
