Regulate, Don’t Litigate - Competition Tribunal Rejects Commissioner’s Case Against Visa And Mastercard

Earlier today, in a much anticipated decision, the Competition Tribunal ("the Tribunal") dismissed the Commissioner of Competition's application challenging Visa's and MasterCard's rules for credit card acceptance by merchants, with particular focus on the card acceptance fees charged to merchants. "Interchange" fees make up a large portion of the fees charged to merchants for accepting card payments, and merchants must pay higher interchange fees when consumers use a premium credit card. While a public version of the decision has not yet been released, the Tribunal issued a public summary of its decision.

The application alleged that the card acceptance rules negatively affect competition by requiring merchants to honour all cards bearing the card network's brand and by prohibiting merchants from imposing surcharges when certain cards are used. The Commissioner had objected that the rules prevent merchants from (i) encouraging customers to use lower-cost forms of