The Department of Justice has been really occupied lately…
Official announcement on Sept. 24, 2024: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-visa-monopolizing-debit-markets:
“The Justice Department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit today against Visa for monopolization and other unlawful conduct in debit network markets in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act”
Link to the complaint filing: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1370421/dl.
The following is a snippet of DOJ’s press release that gives a sense of what is happening:
Visa wields its dominance, enormous scale, and centrality to the debit ecosystem to impose a web of exclusionary agreements on merchants and banks. These agreements penalize Visa’s customers who route transactions to a different debit network or alternative payment system. In so doing, the complaint alleges, Visa locks up debit volume, insulates itself from competition, and smothers smaller, lower-priced competitors.
Visa also induces would-be competitors to become partners instead of entering the market as competitors by offering generous monetary incentives and threatening punitive additional fees.
Visa’s then-CFO said that “Everybody is a friend and partner. Nobody is a competitor.” This works almost everywhere, though only excepting when you’re under the surveillance of antitrust…