DOJ Sues Visa For Locking Out Rival Payment Platforms (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0175124155
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/24/1848223/doj-sues-visa-for-locking-out-rival-payment-platforms
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/24/24253280/doj-antitrust-lawsuit-visa-debit-monopoly
> The lawsuit follows a multiyear investigation of Visa which the company disclosed in 2021. "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 said in a statement. "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."
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> Visa makes more than $7 billion a year in payment processing fees alone, and more than 60 percent of debit transactions in the United States run on Visa's network, the complaint claims. The government alleges that Visa's market dominance is partly due to the "web of exclusionary agreements" it imposes on businesses and banks. Visa has also attempted to "smother" competitors -- including smaller debit networks and newer fintech companies -- the complaint alleges. Visa executives allegedly feel particularly threatened by Apple, which the company has described as an "existential threat," the DOJ claims.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/24/24253280/doj-antitrust-lawsuit-visa-debit-monopoly
In the USA (Score:3)
There's always some corporation who inserts themselves in the middle of things.
Most industrialized countries except the USA have quicker and more efficient electronic payment methods. In the US, these are typically handled by ACH (slow) and Visa/Mastercard.
The US government has been attempting to deploy FedNow for a couple of years now, but the big banks are having none of it. Only smaller banks and credit unions have signed up.
There's too much to lose for the big banks if they started using FedNow, but it is exactly what is needed by consumers and merchants. The only way we can force this is to stop being a customer of large banks.
It used to be that the reason we did business with bag banks was the vast ATM networks we had. Since people are using more electronic transactions and less checks and cash, the reason for having an account at a big bank has diminished.
Re: (Score:2)
The big banks are having none of it because they built a real time payment platform six years before FedNow was available. Walmart will be rolling out instant bank payments to shoppers soon based on a Fiserv product that settle transactions on both real-time payment platforms.
> The Clearing House Payments Company operates the RTP (Real–Time Payments) service which facilitates instant payments for customers of its member banks.
Re: (Score:3)
Even for ATMs, most people don't realize that the co-op network exists. Most credit unions are in the co-op network allowing nation-wide shared access to 30,000 ATMs and 5,600 branches. [1]https://www.coop.org/Shared-Br... [coop.org]
Can't easily find a co-op ATM? Well, they're inside every single 7-11 for starters!
Additionally, my credit union offers ATM fee refunds up to a certain amount each month, so even if I get dinged with fees from someone else's ATM, those fees will be erased.
There really isn't much of a reason t
[1] https://www.coop.org/Shared-Branch-ATM
All Credit Card fraud is Visa's fault (Score:3)
Visa's "protect their network monopoly at all costs" approach is the root cause of all credit card fraud. Every PC in the world theoretically could use a credit card as a secure token and all internet purchases could be validated as "Card Present" ... but we don't have this. By the time Visa created a chipped credit card, shopping had shifted to the Internet and Visa made sure that PCs could not read their cards in order to protect their business model. They wanted to make retailers had to keep buying terminals the functioned specifically with the Visa network, if they had allowed card reading to become a standard PC feature they would have lost billions.
It is also Congress' fault as they allowed Visa to avoid responsibility for all "Card Not Present" transactions while simultaneously also not requiring Visa to support "Card Present" over the internet -- which they could have easily have done.
The pain that this monopoly has inflicted on everyone is almost beyond belief and it needs to be brought to an end.
Re: (Score:1)
> 40 years of conservative talk radio as half our political system has not been good
Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden each had trifectas during the first two years of their respective terms of office, where their party held both houses of Congress.
The reactions will be interesting. (Score:2)
Seeing our government actually start to eyeball companies that have developed near monopoly power in the four decades since Reagan's great culling of regulatory powers, I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing backlash. It's gonna be really interesting watching our government try to redevelop its spine after all the years of free-for-all for the business world. I wonder if it'll last?
Paypal (Score:2)
Does anyone actually still use this?
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. On eBay. Also Menufy accepts Paypal so I use Paypal to pay for any carry out orders I do from restaurants that utilize them.
Just make the fees a line item on the receipt. (Score:2)
That way the consumers can be informed of the fee just like sales tax, and us poor lowly cash payers are no longer helping to fund the monopoly that is visa 'transaction fees'.
I don't want a settlement, don't even care for a fine, I just wan't transparent swipe fees that are actually paid by those that incur the charge.
Which part is theirs? (Score:1)
Every debit card I've had in the last decade or two has been MasterCard-branded. But I have no idea who gets a cut of what -- does Visa own all the back-end?
Monopoly (Score:2)
You mean a company that gets 3% of every transaction ever has an unfair advantage?