Visa and Mastercard extend non-EU card fee limits until 2029, EU says

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Visa and Mastercard will extend fee limits for travel cards agreed five years ago with EU antitrust regulators by another five years to 2029, the European Commission said on Friday.

Visa, the world’s largest payment network operator, and its biggest rival Mastercard in 2019 agreed to a 0.2% fee cap for non-EU debit card payments made in stores and a 0.3% fee cap for credit card payments to end an EU antitrust investigation and avoid hefty fines.

The fee caps are due to end in November this year. The move comes after a lengthy investigation by the EU’s competition watchdog, prompted by a complaint filed in 1997 by business lobby EuroCommerce.

The European Commission, the EU’s antitrust watchdog, said the two companies had voluntarily agreed to keep the fee caps in place after 2024.

“Interregional interchange fees for debit and credit card transactions under these programs will remain capped for the next 5 years until November 2029,” the statement said.

“For card-based (offline) transactions, fees will remain capped at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. For card-free (online) transactions, the limits will remain at 1.15% for debit cards and 1.5% for credit cards,” it said.

Visa and Mastercard set and collect interchange fees, also known as swipe fees, from merchants who accept their debit and credit cards. These fees generate profits for banks and other card issuers.

However, the EU watchdog warned that it would launch an investigation if it found concrete evidence that the current limits were no longer appropriate.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by David Evans)