Visa Inc. - Legal Proceedings

Legal Proceedings

Visa settled an antitrust lawsuit brought by a class of U.S. merchants, including Wal-Mart, for billions of dollars in 2003. According to a website associated with the suit, Visa and MasterCard settled the plaintiffs' claims for a total of $3.05 billion, and Visa's share of this settlement is reported to have been the larger.

In October 2010, Visa and MasterCard reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department in another antitrust case. The companies agreed to allow merchants displaying their logos to decline certain types of cards (because interchange fees differ), or to offer consumers discounts for using cheaper cards.

In December 2010, Visa reached a settlement with the European Union in yet another antitrust case, promising to reduce debit card payments to 0.2 percent of a purchase. 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 Visa's blocking of payments to WikiLeaks, members of the European Parliament expressed concern that payments from European citizens to a European corporation could apparently be blocked by the US, and called for a further reduction in the dominance of Visa and MasterCard in the European payment system.