Walmart, other retailers object to Visa and Mastercard settlement

By Mike Scarcella

WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Major retailers and trade groups are urging a federal judge in Brooklyn to reject a proposed antitrust settlement with Visa V.N and Mastercard MA.N, saying the deal lets the card giants keep charging merchants excessive fees for credit card transactions and offers them few benefits.

Walmart WMT.O said in an objection filed on Friday that the deal, hatched by a group of small local merchants, “offers no meaningful relief” for large national merchants and forces them to release antitrust claims for eight years.

The company said the settlement failed to dismantle a rule that requires merchants to accept all Visa or Mastercard credit cards, from all bank issuers, if they accept any of them.

The settlement, announced in November, would end two decades of litigation after a judge rejected a prior $30 billion deal last year. Under the agreement, Visa and Mastercard will cut the "swipe" fees charged to merchants on retail transactions by 0.1 percentage point for five years.

Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did lead attorneys for merchants who negotiated the settlement. Visa and Mastercard denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to settle the case.

Mastercard in a statement said it continued to believe the settlement is "the best solution for all parties" and said it looked forward to bringing the matter to a close. Visa referred to a prior statement that said the accord would provide merchants of all sizes "meaningful relief, more flexibility and options to control how they accept payments from their customers.”

In a separate filing, the National Retail Federation and Retail Industry Leaders Association warned U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan that the new deal offered “illusory reforms,” and would reward the plaintiffs’ lawyers a “staggering” $206 million in legal fees.

Challengers to the settlement also complained that five small businesses had negotiated the settlement terms for a class of roughly 20 million merchants, freezing out organizations representing $2.7 trillion in annual sales.

Separately, merchant plaintiffs in ongoing litigation against Visa in New York related to debit-card transactions also opposed the settlement, arguing it could harm their case.

Those merchants in their filing said the proposed deal also threatened to derail ongoing U.S. Justice Department and private consumer lawsuits targeting Visa’s alleged monopolization of debit markets.

The case is In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 1:05-md-01720-BMC-JAM.

Read more:

Visa, Mastercard agree to $199.5 million settlement in merchants’ class action

Apple, Visa and Mastercard win dismissal of merchant antitrust lawsuit over payment fees

US accuses Visa of monopolizing debit card swipes

(Reporting by Mike Scarcella)