Lawsuit filed against Visa for engaging in an illegal monopoly that drives up prices for consumers

New York
CNN
—

The US Justice Department filed a lawsuit Tuesday accusing Visa of illegally monopolizing the debit card market.

For greater than a decade, the division alleges, Visa has abused its dominant positionin the debit card market to pressure companies to make use of Visa’s community as an alternative of rivals’, and to cease new options from getting into the market.

“We allege that Visa has unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market,” Attorney General Merrick Garland mentioned in a press release. “Merchants and banks pass along those costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service. As a result, Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing – but the price of nearly everything.”

CNN is reaching out to Visa for touch upon the go well with.

The antitrust go well with is one in every of a number of main actions taken by the Justice Department not too long ago. The division additionally not too long ago filed civil fits against an actual property firm that allegedly helped to artificially inflate rents throughout the nation and one other against Ticketmaster’s mother or father firm Live Nation, and satisfied a decide to declare that Google violated antitrust legal guidelines with its search enterprise.

It additionally comes simply three years after the Justice Department sued to block Visa from merging with monetary expertise startup Plaid. The $5.3 billion-dollar merger settlement was scrapped, and the lawsuit was dropped.

According to the brand new grievance against Visa, which was filed in federal court docket in New York, greater than 60% of debit transactions in the nation happen on Visa’s debit community. Visa, in flip, is ready to cost greater than $7 billion in processing charges on these transactions, the division says.

To hold that management, Visa imposes exclusivity agreements that penalize distributors and banks who wish to run transactions by way of completely different techniques, successfully insulating the corporate from competitors.

“Visa also induces would-be competitors to become partners instead of entering the market as competitors by offering generous monetary incentives and threatening punitive additional fees,” the Justice Department mentioned in a press launch. “As the complaint alleges, Visa coopted the competition because it feared losing share, revenues, or being displaced by another debit network altogether.”

Merchants and retailers have lengthy complained about bank card corporations like Visa charging what they describe as exorbitant charges. A bunch of retailers agreed in March to settle with Visa and Mastercard for $30 billion following a decades-long antitrust battle in court docket.

However, the National Retail Foundation, a commerce group representing retailers, fought to dam the settlement, arguing it provided too little compensation to shops utilizing Visa and Mastercard’s fee terminals. In June, a federal decide rejected the settlement, arguing the bank card corporations needed to make extra concessions to resolve the dispute.