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Visa’s debit routing and merchant fee targeted by DOJ probe

By  |  May 3, 2012

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Visa for possible antitrust violations. The probe focuses on how Visa routes debit transactions to banks, and a new fee that Visa is charging merchants. A press release by the Merchants Payments Coalition describes the fee as “mak[ing] merchants pay for both credit and debit cards and financially coerce merchants into accepting cards they do not want. The fee would also undercut merchants’ competitive choice of which network to use for their transactions in violation of the financial reform law.”

Full content: Marketwatch

 

Related content: The Regulation of Interchange Fees by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board: A Primer on Economic Principles (David Evans, Global Economics Group, Robert Litan, Kauffman Foundation, Brookings Institution & Richard Schmalensee, MIT Sloan, Global Economics Group)

 

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