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US: Retailers ask FTC to explore legality of PCI rules

By  |  June 2, 2016

The advocacy group says card companies use their market power to “unfairly leverage their brands”

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    The National Retail Federation asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate an organization founded by credit card companies to set data security standards, saying the group’s practices raise antitrust concerns.

    The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council “fails to meet any of the principles adopted by the federal government for voluntary standard-setting organizations,” NRF General Counsel Mallory Duncan wrote to the FTC on May 23.

    NRF said the card companies use their market power to “unfairly leverage their brands and proprietary technology through webs of closely controlled interdependent bodies and compliance regimes” including the council.

    The PCI council’s Data Security Standards are forced upon businesses that cannot refuse to accept credit and debit cards and the council acts as “as an anticompetitive barrier to innovation” as they exhausts funds and other resources retailers have available for data security, the letter said.

    Full Content: NRF

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