C|C Payments Blog

Payments News Update - July 22, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Lawsuit Accuses Apple of Antitrust Violations Over Apple Pay Reuters – July 18, 2022 Apple Inc (AAPL.O) was sued on Monday in a proposed class action by payment card issuers accusing the iPhone maker of abusing its market power in mobile devices to thwart competition for its Apple Pay mobile wallet. According to a complaint filed in San Francisco federal...

Payments News Update - June 24, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: UK Watchdog to Review Post-Brexit Visa and Mastercard Fees Reuters – June 21, 2022

Britain's payment systems regulator (PSR) will conduct two market reviews of card fees charged by Visa and Mastercard, the U.S. companies that account for 99% of debit and credit card payments in the UK. The PSR's announcement on Tuesday follows heavy pressure from lawmakers to launch...

Payments News Update - June 10, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Lawmakers Seek to Push Antitrust, Privacy Bills as Big Tech Revamps Lobbying Efforts PYMNTS – June 10, 2022 Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple have been living for the last years with the threat of new legislation in the U.S. that could limit their ability to operate their platforms, and especially during the last 18 months since President Joe Biden took office. But...

U.S. Adoption of a Central Bank Digital Currency Could Revitalize Payments Markets With Competition

The ailing U.S. payments markets could get a shot of much-needed competition if the U.S. government follows through on proposals to adopt a Central Bank Digital Currency (“CBDC”)—which would be issued by the Federal Reserve. The competitive failings of U.S. payments markets were highlighted a few weeks ago at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on interchange or “swipe fees,” the fees that merchants pay...

Payments News Update – May 26, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: CFPB Recasts Innovation Office to Emphasize Competition Banking Dive – May 25, 2022 The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is leaving the sandbox and recasting its innovation efforts to emphasize its role in promoting competition. The agency’s newly established Office of Competition and Innovation, announced Tuesday, aims to explore how customers can...

Pass-on Defences and Indirect Claims: Will UK Courts Apply the Same Antitrust Sauce to the Goose as to the Gander?

How the UK is sorting out the rights of direct and indirect purchasers to claim damages for anti-competitive conduct. By Richard Pike It is well-established in economic literature that anti-competitive conduct may increase prices not only for direct purchasers but also for indirect purchasers. As UK courts are now demonstrating, however, determining who should be allowed to recover, and what each party must...

Payments News Update – May 6, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Senators Grill Visa, Mastercard Execs Over Swipe Fees The Hill – May 4, 2022 Senators on Wednesday scrutinized Visa and Mastercard for raising swipe fees on merchants, costs that they say will be passed down to consumers amid surging inflation. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime critic of the credit card giants, called for new...

Payments News Update - April 22, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Lawmakers Seek to Cancel Card Fee Increases Payments Dive – April 21, 2022 A bipartisan group of four lawmakers implored Visa and Mastercard on Friday to cancel credit and debit card "swipe" fee increases planned for this month, warning them about practices that could raise antitrust concerns. In an April 15 letter to the CEOs of Visa and Mastercard, the Democrats...

Mastercard’s Digital Fee Hike Means Double Trouble for Merchants

By Owen Glist As part of the annual spring ritual of interchange increases and new network fees, Mastercard has announced that it is more than doubling its “Digital Enablement Fee.”  This hefty price hike raises both the cost of digital transactions and antitrust concerns. Mastercard’s Digital Enablement Fee is essentially a tax the network imposes for “enabling” online transactions, also known as...

Payments News Update – April 7, 2022

Legal and Regulatory Developments SPOTLIGHT: Debit Card Antitrust Case Against Visa Revived, With New Judge Reuters – April 5, 2022 A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday revived an antitrust case against Visa Inc over debit card services and reassigned the dispute to a different Texas federal court, after criticizing the slow pace of the litigation and questioning whether the trial judge was biased against the...