MasterCard Europe has reached an understanding with the European Commission on interim interchange fees for cross-border consumer payments within the European Economic Area.
New interchange fees will be set for these transactions while the company pursues its appeal of the commission’s December 2007 decision regarding interchange. MasterCard Europe has temporarily reduced these fees to zero in June 2008 in order to ensure its conformity with the decision.
Effective July 1, 2009, MasterCard Europe will establish intra-European Economic Area (EEA) cross-border default interchange rates for consumer card transactions that, on average, will not exceed 30 basis points for credit cards and 20 basis points for debit cards. These interim rates will apply only to cross-border transactions which account for less than 5% of MasterCard Europe’s total volume, said MasterCard.
In addition, MasterCard Europe announced a new rule for its acquirers that will provide merchants with specific information about the cost of accepting MasterCard consumer, MasterCard commercial and Maestro cards.
Finally, MasterCard Europe announced today that effective July 1, 2009, it will withdraw in the EEA the acquirer fee increases and new fees implemented in October 2008.
Javier Perez, president of MasterCard Europe, said: MasterCard Europe welcomes the commission’s recognition of the legitimacy of interchange fees in open four-party payment systems. We expect this will provide a degree of clarity for our customers, thereby facilitating progress towards the implementation of the single euro payments area.
However, we do not believe this level of interchange is adequate to sustain strong competition in the European payments industry or to encourage the investment and innovation that will be required to provide European consumers and merchants with better payment products in the future. That is why these rates are only interim and why we are pursuing our appeal in the European Court of First Instance of the European Commission’s December 2007 decision. We believe we have strong arguments that the decision should be reversed.
