Visa and Mastercard to extend inter-regional interchange fee caps in the EEA until 2029
The European Commission (EC) says that global payments giants Visa and Mastercard have voluntarily agreed to extend the current caps for inter-regional interchange fees in the European Economic Area (EEA) until 2029.
The EC says Visa and Mastercard will voluntarily continue the caps
In 2019, the world’s two largest payment networks agreed to slash inter-regional interchange fees, also known as multilateral interchange fees (MIFs), by an average of 40% for transactions made in Europe using cards issued outside the EEA in response to an EU antitrust investigation.
These commitments were due to end in November this year, but in a statement made last week, the European Commission (EC) declared that the two firms have voluntarily agreed to continue with the caps “beyond November 2024”.
The EC says that the “inter-regional interchange fees for debit and credit card transactions under these schemes will remain capped for another five years until November 2029”.
The Commission states that the fee caps for card present (offline) transactions will remain at 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. Meanwhile, “for card not present (online) transactions, the caps will remain 1.15% for debit cards and 1.5% for credit cards”.
“In the absence of caps, merchants would face the risk of excessive interchange fees passed on to them through their Merchant Service Charges,” the EC says.
The EC concludes its statement by reaffirming that the recent “voluntary undertakings” by Visa and Mastercard “do not prevent the Commission from conducting investigations or opening proceedings should the Commission obtain concrete evidence showing that the current caps would not be appropriate anymore”.
