Payments Leadership Council

Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover Financial, as well as industry counterparts FIS, Fiserv and Global Payments, have formed the Payments Leadership Council to represent their position to the government and in the media on a range of issues. Card payments are in the spotlight currently.

An example of this is the fee changes planned for April 2021, delayed from April and then October 2020, which have been delayed again, this time for a year. Two US Senators, Dick Durbin, of debit card fee limit fame, and Peter Welch, had written to the CEOs of Visa and Mastercard asking them not to increase fees in the light of the economic situation in the US. Their actions generated a mounting political response to the plan and this appears to be behind this change of plan.

Visa responds to Australian Consumer Council

The Australian Competition and Consumer Council (ACCC) has been ‘concerned that Visa’s strong market position in the credit card acceptance market could be leveraged to limit competition in the debit card acceptance market, by tying the offer of cheaper strategic merchant rates for credit card transactions to a commitment from the merchant to process Visa branded dual network debit card transactions via the Visa network and not through EFTPOS’, according to its Chair, Rod Sims.

Visa AP (Australia) Pty Ltd and Visa Worldwide Pte Limited have given an undertaking about these concerns to the ACCC, which is court enforceable.

The undertaking stops Visa from offering merchants strategic rates on the condition that merchants process debit card payments through their network, and if merchants chose a different network,

Intuit file suit against Visa and Mastercard

Intuit is a company working in the payment business across a range of activities – it is a card accepting merchant, an independent sales organisation (ISO) and a payment facilitator.

It has filed a lawsuit in a US federal court against Mastercard and Visa, alleging ‘unlawful’ price fixing of their interchange and card network scheme fee structures. The suit claims that the requirement that merchants must accept all cards branded Visa or Mastercard is operated as a cartel.

It also claims that they found ways to get around the Durbin interchange fee caps introduced in 2010 to limit feeds charged to retailers for debit card processing.

Intuit’s claim is unusual because it is a transaction processor as well as being an ISO. As an ISO it benefited from the interchange fees and the card network scheme fees worked.