Visa Gears Up for Legal Fight with DOJ Over Debit Card Monopoly Allegations

Visa has hired two prominent Washington, D.C., antitrust attorneys to defend the company in a new U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit that accuses the payments giant of a monopoly in the debit card market. As reported by Reuters, Visa’s legal team includes Beth Wilkinson, a veteran trial lawyer from Wilkinson Stekloff, and Jonathan Gleklen, the head of the antitrust group at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer.

The DOJ’s lawsuit, filed earlier this week in Manhattan federal court, is the Biden administration’s first major antitrust action targeting the financial industry. The government alleges that Visa has hindered competition by threatening merchants with higher fees if they route transactions to other networks, which, the DOJ claims, has stifled innovation in the payments sector.

Per Reuters, Wilkinson and Gleklen will face off against a DOJ team led by senior counsel Edward Duffy, who joined the department in 2022. Wilkinson is no stranger to high-profile cases, having recently defended Microsoft in an unsuccessful Federal Trade Commission (FTC) attempt to block the tech giant’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision.

This new legal challenge comes as Visa continues to face litigation in Brooklyn federal court, where the company, along with Mastercard, is accused of overcharging merchants to process transactions. Visa has consistently denied these allegations. Reuters also notes that the legal team from Arnold & Porter has been instrumental in representing Visa in these ongoing cases.

Source: Reuters