UK Regulator Fines Barclays $10.3M for Violating Card-Fee Rules

The U.K.’s payments regulator has fined Barclays 8.4 million pounds ($10.26 million).

In a Thursday (Dec. 1) press release, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) said it imposed the fine in response to Barclays’ failure to comply with interchange fee regulation by not providing retailers complete information on the costs of its card services.

“This meant retailers were unable to easily understand the transaction fees associated with accepting certain types of card payments,” per the release.

The fine follows a PSR investigation which found that Barclays did not appropriately clarify to retailers the transaction fees associated with accepting different types of card payments between December 2015 and December 2018.

During this time, the PSR says Barclays processed a third of all card transactions in the U.K., affecting thousands of merchants.

The fine is the second intervention relating to interchange fee regulation by the authority after it fined four NatWest group banks 1.82 million pounds for overcharging fees on credit card transactions earlier this year.

In addition to the financial penalty imposed, the PSR has made sure that the full information required under the regulation is now available to all retailers who use Barclays’ card payment processing services.

“It’s vital that retailers and consumers get value for money on payment services — the interchange fee rules are an important part of making sure this happens. Barclays’ failure to be transparent with retailers about the fees they pay for card services meant retailers could have been missing out on better deals,” PSR Managing Director Chris Hemsley said in the press release.

As the authority responsible for overseeing card schemes, the PSR is also investigating Visa and Mastercard over their fees in two separate probes.

One investigation is looking at scheme and processing fees while another is considering cross-border interchange fees.

Shortly after the launch of those reviews, the U.K. Parliament’s Treasury Committee sent letters to Visa and Mastercard asking them to explain their increases in cross-border interchange fees after the U.K. left the European Union.

In August, the two U.S.-based card firms responded by blaming fraud and increased competition for the fee hikes.

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