- Retailers like Aldi, Amazon and Carrefour supported a complaint against Visa / Mastercard
- High fees and lack of transparency are at the heart of the discussion
- The costs increased by 33.9% between 2018 and 2022
According to a report of PK Press Club.
Complaints relate to the negative impact of costs on EU competitiveness and the lack of transparency around them, the two suppliers of payment networks dominating around two thirds of transactions in the euro zone.
The retailers have accused international card programs (ICS) of uncontrolled cost increases and complex pricing structures that are not always as clear.
Visa and Mastercard criticized on costs in Europe
A 2024 BRATTLE Group report revealed a cumulative increase of 33.9% between CI costs between 2018 and 2022, despite no improvement or justification of the corresponding services.
Visa defended its costs: “This includes extremely high security and prevention of fraud, operational resilience and almost perfect reliability, and a wide range of high -quality innovative consumers and innovative products and services that meet the needs of consumers and merchants.”
An extract from the letter addressed to the antitrust chief of the Teresa Ribera commission, the commissioner of financial services Maria Luís Albuquerque and to the chief of the economy Valdis Dombrovskis, seen by PK Press Clubbed:
“International card diagrams (ICS) have been able to increase their costs without competitive challenge or regulatory examination. They also made their system of costs and rules so complex and opaque that players are unable to understand, not to mention the challenge, what they pay and why.”
Supporters include the main associations and professional companies, such as Aldi, Amazon, Carrefour, H&M, Ikea and Ebay.
They call for antitrust actions against the two payment networks suppliers, in particular the introduction of additional costs, transparency and regulatory tools.
The two companies had previously agreed to reduce their multilateral exchange costs for payments in the EEA on average by around 40%.
