Retailers in the United Kingdom are following their counterparts in the United States and are suing Visa over payment processing fees, according to court records from July 23.
Wal-Mart-owned Asda, William Morrison Supermarkets, and the Acardia Group filed the lawsuit, along with eight smaller retailers that filed lawsuits the same day.
Though Bloomberg News was unable to get a comment from the merchants beyond a confirmation of the legal proceedings, Mark Hooper, a spokesman for Visa Europe said in an email:
“We have not seen this claim. We are surprised that a case might be brought and, if it was, would strongly contest it.”
The merchants’ lawsuit follows last week’s announcement that the European Commission is officially planning to place a cap on interchange fees that would limit debit and credit card interchange fees to 0.2 and 0.3 percent per transaction, respectively. Although a lot could change between the implementation of the interchange cap in two years and the proceedings of the aforementioned lawsuit, it is very clear that interchange fees in general are under threat on both sides of the Atlantic.
Click here to read more from Bloomberg. Visit the Compliance and Regulation Strategy Session on PaymentsJournal to get caught up on the European interchange battle.