The National Restaurant Association said Tuesday morning that it is joining the growing opposition to the proposed $7.2 billion antitrust settlement with Visa and MasterCard over fees for credit card transactions, another major setback to the endangered deal.
The group, which represents the $600 billion U.S. restaurant industry, is the last of six major trade groups that are named plaintiffs in the antitrust action to oppose the historic deal, which must be approved a federal judge weighing opposition to the settlement.
The restaurant trade group said its main concern is that the settlement would prohibit all merchants that use Visa and MasterCard—whether they decide to opt in or opt out of the settlement—from filing future lawsuits over interchange issues. "There is strong concern that the proposed settlement agreement will not achieve the litigation's most critical goal—to fundamentally change a broken marketplace in which swipe fees are set," Dawn Sweeney, president of the restaurant lobby group, said in a statement.
While the group has been pushing for reforms that would bring transparency to the interchange system and help lower costs for restaurants, the proposed settlement accomplishes neither, it said.
Under the proposed deal, the
While the settlement has won approval from grocers like Kroger Co. and Safeway Inc., it is being fought by powerful groups like the National Retail Federation,
The settlement will have enormous impacts on financial institutions. For example, credit unions alone earn an estimated $3 billion a year in interchange fees on their credit cards and like many other depositories, own stock in Visa and MasterCard. In addition, credit unions and banks will fund the huge payment by Visa, which is converting a number of credit union- and bank-owned Class B Visa shares to fund its share of the settlement.
