On Friday 27 June 2025 the Competition Appeal Tribunal (“CAT”) handed down a landmark judgment in Merchant Umbrella Interchange Fees [2025] CAT 37, deciding for the first time that the card payment schemes operated by Mastercard and Visa constitute a object infringement of Article 101(1) TFEU.
The judgment arises out of the long-running interchange fee claims against Visa and Mastercard. The proceedings involve thousands of UK and European businesses seeking compensation for losses caused by anti-competitive interchange fees, which they are required to pay to banks in order to use the Visa and Mastercard card payment schemes.
Trial 1, the first of at least three trials in the proceedings, was listed to determine whether the interchange fees breached Article 101(1) TFEU.
There has been a long history of regulatory and judicial decisions against Visa and Mastercard, over more than a decade, finding that aspects of their interchange fees from time to time had an anti-competitive effect on the market in breach of Article 101(1). However in this judgment, for the first time, the CAT found that unregulated interchange fees constitute an infringement of Article 101(1) ‘by object’ – i.e. an arrangement that can be regarded, by its very nature, as harmful to normal competition.
You can read the judgment here.
Oliver Jackson appeared for the claimants, along with Kieron Beal KC from Blackstone Chambers and Philip Woolfe and Antonia Fitzpatrick from Monckton Chambers, instructed by Stephenson Harwood LLP and Scott+Scott UK LLP.
