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MasterCard settles card transaction fee dispute

By Danielle Wightman-Stone

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Mastercard has agreed to pay Tesco 61 million dollars to settle a multi-billion dollar lawsuit over credit card interchange fees.

Tesco launched the legal action against MasterCard in 2014 to recover alleged “historic overpayment of anti-competitive interchange fees”. The supermarket is just one of the 20 UK retailers suing Mastercard over the fees, according to Bloomberg.

“We have been settling with Tesco, which is the largest merchant claimant in this litigation,” Martina Hund-Mejean, New York-based MasterCard’s CFO, said on the company’s earnings call last week. “We are pleased that that is behind us.”

In addition to the UK lawsuit, Mastercard has been under fire from the European Union, after it was sent a formal complaint over its “artificially high” card-payment fees.

“We have concerns both in relation to the rules MasterCard applies to cross-border transactions within the EU, as well as the fees charged to retailers for receiving payments made with cards issued outside Europe,” said EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

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