Segnalazione da Eurocommerce - Mastercard

The retail sector calls on the European Court of Justice to uphold the Commission’s 2007 decision against MasterCard’s anticompetitive fees.

Tomorrow the case of MasterCard v Commission will be heard in the European Court in Luxembourg. At issue is the infamous multilateral interchange fee (MIF) imposed by MasterCard on each card payment.

“The interchange fee is unseen and non-negotiable and imposes a hidden tax on each card payment,” said Christian Verschueren, Director General of EuroCommerce. “This unfair extra cost puts a 12 billion per year burden on retailers and inflates prices for all European consumers.”

In 2007 the Commission ruled that MasterCard’s MIF was in breach of European competition law and ordered the card scheme to remove it. As a consequence, MasterCard set its cross-border MIF to zero in 2008, but appealed the Commission decision. On 8^th July, the ECJ will hear oral arguments from both sides and EuroCommerce, as the original complainant, will intervene to support the Commission. A final decision will be published later in the year.

“It is likely that MasterCard will argue that the European competition law provisions (Article 101 TFEU) did not in fact apply following a change in the organisation’s legal ownership in 2006. The Commission, in its 2007 decision, refuted this claim, arguing that the anticompetitive effects of the MIF were unaltered by the change.”

The Court decision will also have profound implications on the single euro payments area (SEPA) initiative. Many national card schemes operate without a MIF. If, under SEPA, these are replaced by MIF-based schemes, such as Maestro and V-pay, fees on card payments across Europe will rise. This is already happening, since it is in the interests of banks to issue the most lucrative cards, Consequently, innovative, cheaper payment systems are not able to enter the market.

“With MIF, there is nothing like ‘optimum’ or ‘fair’ fees: only the extraction of the highest possible profit,” added Verschueren. “In the end, all consumers pay the bill.”