“Competition (…) encourages companies to offer consumers goods and services at the most favourable terms,” says the Commission’s website devoted to antitrust.
On September 11 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled that when charging cross-border interchange fees, Mastercard, the credit card giant, breached the EU antitrust law – a law area which seeks to establish fair competition and a genuine internal market.
The so-called multilateral interchange fees ("MIFs") are fees paid by a retailer to the bank of the cardholder each time a cardholder uses their card for payment. However, most consumers are not informed about these fees even though usually they are the ones who ultimately cover them.
Visa and Mastercard claimed that the resources collected in form of these fees are used to finance affordable and safe services with various benefits and should therefore be taken into account. However, as the Court was not presented with a sufficient proof of these advantages, it deemed the reasoning as ineffective.
Although Mastercard does not have to pay any fine for this breach, the judgement will influence other cases throughout the EU and also back the legislation (Interchange Fee Regulation) regarding caps on MIFs currently in the making. The Commission itself calls this judgement “a big win for EU consumers”.