Mastercard fined in Europe over merchant fees

The European Commission has fined Mastercard 570 million Euros, or about $648 million, over card network rules that prevented merchants from shopping for better terms at other banks in the EU.

The EU regulators that police competition said on Tuesday that Mastercard's rules before 2015 forced merchants to pay fees in their home country rather than looking for better rates in other countries.

This artificially raised the cost of card payments, said Margrethe Vestager, EU Competition Commission, in a press release.

European regulators in 2015 set interchange fee caps that also standardized rates across the EU in an effort to increase transparency and "level" the competition.