Mastercard Cooperating With DOJ Antitrust Investigation of Debit Program

Mastercard is cooperating with an antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

The firm received a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) from the DOJ Antitrust Division in March and is cooperating with the investigation, Mastercard said in its quarterly report released Thursday (April 27).

The CID seeks documents and information regarding a potential violation of the Sherman Act, and the investigation is focused on Mastercard’s U.S. debit program and competition with other payment networks and technologies, according to the report.

Bloomberg reported Thursday that the DOJ’s CID signals a widening of a similar investigation of Visa that was launched two years ago and that saw a demand for further documents and information from Visa in January.

The investigation of Visa is focused on issues around the Durbin Amendment, which requires banks to have at least two competing payments networks available to process their debit card transactions, giving merchants a choice, according to the report.

“It’s not surprising that the DOJ would request information from other players in the debit space,” Mastercard Chief Financial Officer Sachin Mehra told Bloomberg.

Reached by PYMNTS, a Mastercard spokesperson said the company had no comment beyond the information in its quarterly report.

As PYMNTS reported in January, Visa is cooperating with the DOJ’s probe into its debit card practices.

The DOJ’s antitrust arm begin investigating Visa in 2021 for allegedly anticompetitive debit card processes in the debit card industry. That meant collecting data and determining whether Visa prevented retailers from sending debit card transactions through lower-cost card networks.

In another move around the regulation of debit cards, the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors said in October that it was officially ending so-called network exclusivity and would instead require all debit card issuers to enable merchants to pick from at least two unaffiliated payment card networks.

The Fed said at the time that the new dual-processor requirement would take effect in July and would apply to all debit card purchases, including online payments and other “card-not-present” transactions.

During a Thursday conference call focused on Mastercard’s quarterly report, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach detailed the payment network’s broadening of acceptance, saying that its “payment footprint” has doubled over the past five years and surpassed 100 million locations.