The long-running dispute on Mastercard and Visa’s interchange fees is back at the court today for a liability hearing, with another hearing scheduled to run into next year.
The case spans back several years with claimants including well-known businesses such as Nando’s, Vodafone, Ocado, and Marks and Spencer.
The European Commission investigated Visa and MasterCard’s interchange fees back in 2007, which found the US card company’s had infringed on competition law. Since this decision, hundreds of companies have issued claims against Visa and MasterCard which are currently being litigated in the English Courts.
Several of the cases were transferred over to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) from the High Court in April 2022. Several claimant law firms such as Harcus Parker and Scott and Scott filed class actions.
The lawsuits allege that Mastercard and Visa both acted unlawfully by overcharging businesses for accepting credit and debit card payments on corporate and consumer cards. As every time a company accepts a Visa or MasterCard debit or credit card, it must pay a ‘merchant service charge’ to the bank that provides the payment services.
All the separate cases against the credit card companies were compiled together and the standalone case is known as the ‘merchant interchange fee umbrella proceedings’.
Over in the US, both Visa and Mastercard agreed to pay $6.2bn back on 2018 as part of a settlement over card fees.
Today, for the merchant interchange fee umbrella proceedings, trial one on liability kicked off, which is estimated to run for six weeks. Trial two on ‘pass on’ has been listed to take place commencing on 11 November 2024, with a time estimate of six weeks, and with closing submissions to be heard in the week commencing 31 March 2025.