{"id":56712,"date":"2015-05-06T13:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=ce5a9714aabf436280d1c93621133802"},"modified":"2015-05-06T13:00:48","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T13:00:48","slug":"news-story-cma-closes-mastercard-and-visa-investigations-following-eu-regulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=56712","title":{"rendered":"News story: CMA closes MasterCard and Visa investigations following EU regulation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>In November 2014, the Competition and Markets Authority (<abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/cma-decides-not-to-progress-interchange-fee-investigations-at-the-present-time\">announced<\/a> that as a result of the European Union\u2019s (EU) impending Interchange Fee Regulation (<abbr title=\"Interchange Fee Regulation\">IFR<\/abbr>) it was not planning, at that time, to progress the investigations. The <abbr title=\"Interchange Fee Regulation\">IFR<\/abbr> was approved by the Council of the European Union on 20 April 2015 and caps on interchange fees will take effect later in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>As the <abbr title=\"Interchange Fee Regulation\">IFR<\/abbr> will deal with the harm to consumers and retailers which, it is suspected, is caused by current levels of interchange fees, the <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> has confirmed that it will now close its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/cma-cases\/investigation-into-interchange-fees-mastercard-visa-mifs\">cases<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>\u2018s predecessor, the Office of Fair Trading (<abbr title=\"Office of Fair Trading\">OFT<\/abbr>), played a significant role in the drive to deal with interchange fees. The <abbr title=\"Office of Fair Trading\">OFT<\/abbr> opened the investigations into MasterCard and Visa on interchange fees before the European Commission (EC) itself started taking action. It also intervened at the General Court and the Court of Justice to support the EC in defending its decision that MasterCard\u2019s European interchange fee arrangements infringed competition law, thus setting an important legal precedent. In addition, the <abbr title=\"Office of Fair Trading\">OFT<\/abbr> played an important role in making a case for the establishment of the <a rel=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.psr.org.uk\/\">UK Payment Systems Regulator<\/a>, which will be the competent authority for the monitoring and enforcement of compliance with the <abbr title=\"Interchange Fee Regulation\">IFR<\/abbr> in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>Caps on the levels of multilateral interchange fees (<abbr title=\"multilateral interchange fees\">MIFs<\/abbr>) that may apply to transactions made using MasterCard and Visa consumer payment cards will take effect 6 months after the <abbr title=\"Interchange Fee Regulation\">IFR<\/abbr> enters into force. Under the <abbr title=\"Interchange Fee Regulation\">IFR<\/abbr>, <abbr title=\"multilateral interchange fees\">MIFs<\/abbr> will be capped at no more than 0.3% and 0.2% of the value of the transaction for credit card transactions and debit card transactions respectively.<\/p>\n<p>Currently Visa typically charges 0.2% of the transaction value plus 1p (capped at 50p) for debit card transactions and 0.77% of the transaction value for consumer credit cards. MasterCard typically charges 7 to 11p per MasterCard and Maestro debit card transaction and 0.8% of transaction value for consumer credit cards.<\/p>\n<p>The <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> consulted with the British Retail Consortium regarding its provisional decision to close the investigations before finalising its decision to do so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The CMA has decided to close its investigations of MasterCard\u2019s and Visa\u2019s multilateral interchange fees after it was confirmed that an EU regulation that will cap these fees will soon come into force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}