Anti-Competitive Practices in the United States | Justice Department Sues Visa

(Washington) The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it is filing charges against payment card issuer Visa for anticompetitive practices in the United States.

In the complaint filed in a New York court, the US authorities accuse Visa of abusing its dominant market position to impose exclusivity agreements on banks and merchants.

“We allege that Visa has unlawfully acquired the power to charge fees that far exceed what [la compagnie] could obtain in a competitive market,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

“Merchants and banks pass these costs on to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service. Therefore, Visa’s illegal behavior affects not just the price of one thing, but the price of virtually everything,” he adds.

Visa controls more than 60% of debit card transactions in the United States, from which it collects fees of more than $7 billion a year, according to Justice Department estimates.

The lawsuit also accuses the San Francisco-based company of “maintaining its monopoly” by entering into non-compete agreements with potential rivals.

“Visa is afraid of competition and therefore abuses its monopoly position to hold back existing debit rivals and buy up potential rivals to the detriment of consumers, merchants, banks and the competitive process itself,” a senior official in the Justice Department’s antitrust section, Doha Mekki, was quoted in the text.

In 2021, Visa announced that it was the target of an investigation by the department into its practices in the United States concerning debit cards, in a document sent to the American securities regulator (SEC).