Visa Europe deals with EC concerning interchange fees

Visa Europe expects reaching an agreement with the European Commission (EC) concerning interchange fees charged for cross-border card transactions by the end of the year.

Its known that Last March the EC started investigation of interchange fees charged by Visa Europe regarding price fixing usage as forbidden restrictive business practices. That was an echo of 2002’s antitrust agreement when Visa agreed to reduce levels of interchange fees for processing card transactions. Concerning Visa's rival MasterCard In June 2008 it was suspended in avoiding interchange fess daily penalty payments of 3.5% of its daily global turnover in the preceding business year.

Anyway Visa Europe chief Ayliffe announeced that dialogue with EC Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes was very constructive so Visa expects a deal to be closed as soon as possible this year.

Confusion with interchange fees has also had wider consequences, hampering the implementation of the single euro payments area.