MasterCard and Visa Will Pay Billions to Settle Antitrust Suit

[Omaha Steve]

Source: NY Times

By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

Retailers will be able to charge their customers more for paying with credit cards under the terms of a multibillion-dollar settlement announced late in the day on Friday.

MasterCard, Visa and major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, agreed to pay more than $6 billion to settle accusations that they engaged in anticompetitive practices in payment processing.

The settlement is the culmination of a lawsuit brought in federal court on behalf of roughly seven million merchants in 2005. Merchants said that the companies engaged in price-fixing to charge high fees for processing credit and debit card payments.

In addition, the merchants claimed, the payment processors unfairly banned stores from compelling their customers to use less expensive methods of payments like cash and checks.

FULL story at link.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/business/mastercard-and-visa-settle-antitrust-suit.html?_r=1&partner=EXCITE&ei=5043

[freshwest]

1. Major blow to the 'cashless' society. But now we get charged for not using cash or checks. Okay...

[Amonester]

2. Are there any honest capitalist corporations left anywhere, or...

are they just all a bunch of greedy corrupt mofos everywhere???

[nanabugg]

3. I don't think so. But any retailer that charges more for using credit cards will lose

business IMHO.

[xtraxritical]

4. Since the whole system is automated and electronic over the internet it costs them much less

to process a transaction than it did with paper checks and even cash. These fraudulent bankers increased their margins with automated productivity, putting people out of work, and now they want to charge extra. Plus, when they go belly up the tax payers bail them out. WTF? Just shoot me, please.

[AllyCat]

5. Many of the retailers, restaurants on Madison's State St. shopping district

will not accept credit cards anymore. There are ATMs about every 3rd store, but you pay with cash. Most will even take checks. Just not plastic. Can't say I blame them. These are small, indy merchants, not big chains for the most part and they take it in the teeth with these fees.

Yet, instead of the merchants who sued getting their money back and maybe, oh can I dream!, passing it back to the consumers, the merchants will just charge more and the banks get to keep collecting all that dough.

Grrrr....!!!