Mastercard and Visa Secure Appeal in UK Multilateral Interchange Fee Battle

The London Court of Appeal ruled Tuesday (March 17) that Mastercard and Visa can challenge last year’s judgment that they breached competition law with their multilateral interchange fees, Reuters reported Monday.

The earlier judgment, handed down in June 2025 by the United Kingdom’s Competition Appeal Tribunal, came in a case brought by hundreds of merchants, according to the report.

Mastercard and Visa welcomed Tuesday’s ruling by the Court of Appeal and said interchange provides benefits to consumers, businesses and banks, the report said.

The claimants’ representative, Cian Mansfield from law firm Scott+Scott, told Reuters, per the report: “We are confident that we will resist the application successfully at the substantive appeal.”

The Competition Appeal Tribunal’s June 2025 judgment, which unanimously ruled that Mastercard and Visa’s multilateral interchange fees violate European competition law, was part of a long-running legal battle and applied to linked lawsuits brought by hundreds of merchants.

Scott+Scott Managing Partner David Scott said at the time that the ruling was “a significant win for all merchants who have been paying excessive interchange fees to Visa and Mastercard.”

Both Mastercard and Visa said shortly after that ruling that they would seek permission to appeal the case.

“Visa continues to believe that interchange is a critical component to maintaining a secure digital payments ecosystem that benefits all parties, including consumers, merchants and banks,” a Visa spokesperson told Reuters at the time.

A Mastercard spokesperson told Reuters that the company strongly disagreed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s decision, saying that the decision was “deeply flawed” and that Mastercard would seek permission to appeal.

PYMNTS reported in December 2025 that Mastercard and Visa have also faced legal battles in the United States in which merchants claim that the companies’ interchange fees and acceptance terms amounted to monopolistic behavior.

The New York Fed published research in March 2025 that found that card issuers’ rewards expenses are largely covered by interchange fees. The Fed found that banks’ average interchange income is 1.82% of purchase volume on average, while rewards costs are 1.57%, meaning that about 86% of the income is passed on to cardholders in the form of rewards.