Industry Leaders Magazine: What is the future for Visa and Mastercard as settlement hits a roadblock?
Trade groups said the settlement would have given merchants only small and temporary relief, and made it difficult for them to mount future legal challenges. “It didn’t address the problem of Visa, Mastercard and banks forming a cartel to issue credit cards and set fees, such that merchants have to accept all cards or none,” Doug Kantor, general counsel of the National Association of Convenience Stores (and MPC Executive Committee member), said in an interview. “The next step, presumably, is a trial,” he added.
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CNET: Visa, Mastercard Settlement Blocked in Court. What’s Next for Credit Card Swipe Fees?
Judge Brodie found the settlement to be lacking, indicating that the proposed five-year cap and improved merchant flexibility weren’t enough to fix the issue. The Merchants Payment Coalition agreed, issuing a statement following Judge Brodie’s June 13 court memo. “This proposed settlement would have done nothing to address the problem of how Visa and Mastercard centrally price fix swipe fees,” said Christopher Jones, MPC executive committee member and National Grocers Association senior vice president of government relations and counsel. The MPC also stated that the settlement would make the problem worse. Under the proposal, Visa and Mastercard would be able to increase network fees whenever they wanted to -- wiping out any relief offered by the five-year cap on swipe fees.
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NACS Daily: Judge Officially Rejects Credit Card Settlement
"[The settlement] didn't address the problem of Visa, Mastercard and banks forming a cartel to issue credit cards and set fees, such that merchants have to accept all cards or none," Doug Kantor, general counsel of NACS (and MPC Executive Committee member), said in an interview with Reuters. “We’re gratified to see that the court recognized how bad this settlement was.”
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Washington Post: Judge rejects $30 billion Visa, Mastercard swipe-fee settlement
The judge’s rejection of the settlement is recognition that it “didn’t come close” to addressing the issues between card companies and merchants, said Doug Kantor, (MPC Executive Committee member and) general counsel at the National Association of Convenience Stores, another retailer trade group. “Visa and Mastercard organize all the banks that issue their cards into cartels and they set the prices for those cartels in an all-or-nothing situation, and that has effects for the economy, for Main Street businesses and for consumers,” Kantor said. “The judge recognized that this settlement doesn’t actually touch any of those problems.”
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Politico: Judge blocks Visa-Mastercard swipe fee settlement
"Thankfully, the judge made the right call," said National Grocers Association Chief Government Relations Officer and Counsel Christopher Jones, who serves on the executive committee of the Merchants Payments Coalition, in a statement. "At this point, the only way to bring true relief and fix the broken payments market is for Congress to pass the Credit Card Competition Act."
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CNN: Federal judge rejects $30 billion settlement between Visa, Mastercard and retailers
The Merchants Payments Coalition — whose members include supermarkets, retail chains, restaurants, drug stores, convenience stores, gas stations and online merchants focused on payments system reform — blasted the preliminary settlement as being insufficient. Christopher Jones, an executive committee member of the Merchants Payments Coalition, said it would have enabled the credit card companies to “keep price-fixing swipe fees and blocking competition.” “Thankfully, the judge made the right call in recognizing what a bad deal this would have been for Main Street merchants and their customers,” Jones said in a statement on Tuesday.
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Reuters: Visa, Mastercard $30 billion swipe fee settlement rejected by US judge
"It didn't address the problem of Visa, Mastercard and banks forming a cartel to issue credit cards and set fees, such that merchants have to accept all cards or none," Doug Kantor, general counsel of the National Association of Convenience Stores (and MPC Executive Committee member), said in an interview. "The next step, presumably, is a trial," he added.
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The Hill: Judge rejects $30B Visa, Mastercard ‘swipe fee’ settlement
“Thankfully, the judge made the right call in recognizing what a bad deal this would have been for Main Street merchants and their customers. It’s extremely unusual for a judge to reject a settlement at the preliminary stage, so this shows how far Visa and Mastercard’s proposal missed the mark,” said Christopher Jones, chief government relations officer and counsel at the National Grocers Association and a member of the executive committee of the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC).
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Bloomberg: Visa, Mastercard $30 Billion Swipe-Fee Deal Blocked by Judge
“We appreciate that there was recognition of the fatal flaws that would have made the settlement a bad deal for Main Street rather than a correction of credit-card industry violations of the antitrust laws,” Christopher Jones, an executive committee member of the Merchants Payments Coalition, said in a statement after the hearing.
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Payments Dive: Judge sways away from Visa-Mastercard settlement
The MPC called the settlement a “flawed” one, suggesting in a press release that it would allow the card networks to persist in overcharging merchants. “Visa and Mastercard wanted a settlement that would let them keep price-fixing swipe fees and blocking competition,” National Grocers Association Chief Government Relations Officer Christopher Jones said in the MPC release.
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