Criticism
The European Union has repeatedly expressed concern over the dominance of MasterCard. In April 2009, MasterCard reached a settlement with the European Union in an antitrust case, promising to reduce debit card payments to 0.2 percent of a purchase. In December 2010, a senior official from the European Central Bank called for a break-up of the Visa/Mastercard duopoly by creation of a new European debit card for use in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). After MasterCard's blocking of payments to WikiLeaks, members of European Parliament expressed concern that payments from European citizens to a European corporation could apparently be blocked by the USA, and called for a further reduction in the dominance of Visa and MasterCard in the European payment system.
WikiLeaks published documents showing that American authorities lobbied Russia to defend the interests of Visa and MasterCard.
Read more about this topic: MasterCard
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)