EU fines Mastercard more than half a billion euros

[nitpicker]

https://www.dw.com/en/eu-fines-mastercard-more-than-half-a-billion-euros/a-47179421

EU fines Mastercard more than half a billion euros

The European Commission on Tuesday fined Mastercard €570 million ($648 million) for preventing retailers from looking for better card payment terms at banks around Europe. The Commission, which monitors competition, said that Mastercard's rules prior to 2015 forced retailers to pay certain bank fees in the country they are located rather than let them shop around.
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EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said that "By preventing merchants from shopping around for better conditions offered by banks in other member states, Mastercard's rules artificially raised the costs of card payments, harming consumers and retailers in the EU."

When a customer pays a retailer with a credit card, the store's bank pays a fee to the cardholder's bank. The retailer's bank then passes this fee on to the store, which increases costs for customers. Prior to 2015, the level of these "interchange fees" varied widely across Europe, but Mastercard's rules at the time required banks receiving card payments to apply the fee set in their home country.

"This led to higher prices for retailers and consumers, to limited cross-border competition and to an artificial segmentation of the single market," the EU Commission said.
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