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Belgium-based merchant-advocacy group EuroCommerce says MasterCard Worldwide is trying to circumvent the ruling by the European Commission last December that rejected the card company's cross-border interchange-rate policy. EuroCommerce, in a release issued Tuesday, says MasterCard Wednesday plans to increase fees it charges acquiring banks for card transactions. Those "scheme fees" would increase by more than 160% in some markets and would be passed along to merchants as part of the discount rate acquirers charge merchants, the group contends. The higher fees appear to be targeted at domestic card transactions–those within specific European countries–not on cross-border purchases. But EuroCommerce says the new fees skirt the spirit of the commission's ruling that MasterCard's multilateral interchange rates violate rules on restrictive trade practices. "They are trying to recoup lost revenue by increasing fees in other areas without justification," Xavier Durieu, head of the group, said in a statement. MasterCard declines to comment on the accusation. "Per company policy, we do not comment on pricing, as we consider communications with our customers to be confidential," a MasterCard spokesperson tells CardLine Global sister publication Cards&Payments. MasterCard agreed to suspend its cross-border interchange-rate policy while it appeals the commission ruling. But EuroCommerce and the European Retail Round Table, which represents large merchant chains, also contend their members are not seeing the benefit of the suspension. Banks generally have not renegotiated merchant fees, the groups charge. "Go ask an average shopkeeper or hotel that does (a lot of) cross-border transactions and ask them whether their acquiring bank informed them about the pull back of MasterCard fees," Jan Molema, a group payment card manager based in Belgium for furniture retailer Ikea, tells Cards&Payments. "It does not happen." Molema, who is active in the Retail Round Table's lobbying activities, contends that only a few of the 20 acquirers Ikea deals with in Europe have refunded or withdrawn the merchant fees they charge on cross-border transactions, even after the chain insisted on it. EuroCommerce's Durieu says in the statement that among the excuses acquirers give for not lowering merchant fees is that the interchange fee suspension is only "provisional" pending MasterCard's appeal. A spokesperson for European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes says the office would not have a comment Tuesday on the merchant groups' accusations.
