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Canada: Tribunal releases swipe-fee decision

By  |  September 10, 2013

Canada’s Competition Tribunal has released its decision that tossed the Competition Bureau’s antitrust case against credit card giants Visa and MasterCard regarding their swipe-fees last July, crushing the Bureau’s efforts to allow retailers to reject high-fee credit cards or impose surcharges on customers to make up for the credit card companies’ costs.

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    The Bureau said it s reviewing the Tribunal’s decision. The Tribunal kept confidential some of its reasoning for dismissing the case without costs.

    The Commissioner of Competition was looking to allow merchants to reject cards with high swipe-fees, charged to retailers every time a credit card is used at the register, or to transfer the burden of those fees onto consumers. Such swipe-fees are worth $233 billion a year, 90 percent of which involves Visa or MasterCard.

    The full text of the Tribunal’s decision can be read here.

    Full Content: Bloomberg

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