LONDON, March 16 - Visa and Mastercard have been given the right to challenge a tribunal judgment that found their default multilateral interchange fees, applied to retailers, contravened competition law, the Court of Appeal ruled on Tuesday.
The decision follows a Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruling last year in a set of linked lawsuits brought by hundreds of merchants. In that earlier judgment the tribunal concluded the multilateral interchange fees payable under the two card networks' schemes breached European competition law.
Lawyers for the merchant claimants previously noted the CAT finding marked the first time that the card networks' commercial card and inter-regional multilateral interchange fees had been formally held to infringe competition rules. The Court of Appeal's order on Tuesday, however, permits Visa and Mastercard to proceed with an appeal against the tribunal's finding.
Both companies said in separate public statements that interchange performs an important function within a digital payments ecosystem and that the mechanism yields benefits for consumers, businesses and banks. The statements welcomed the Court of Appeal's decision to allow the legal challenge to advance.
Cian Mansfield of law firm Scott+Scott, representing the claimants, responded to the permission to appeal by saying: "We are confident that we will resist the application successfully at the substantive appeal" - signalling that the claimants intend to oppose the appeal when the substantive hearing takes place.
The development keeps the dispute alive and opens a further phase of litigation in which the appellate court will consider whether the CAT's interpretation of competition law and its application to the networks' default interchange structures should stand.
Context and implications
The Court of Appeal's permission to appeal does not determine the final outcome of the litigation; it allows the card networks to seek a full appellate hearing. The underlying CAT judgment remains in place pending further proceedings, and the substantive appeal will address the legal and factual basis for the tribunal's finding that those specific interchange arrangements infringed competition law.