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Visa Inc.'s deal to provide New Zealand merchants with more power regarding card-acceptance costs likely will lead to increasing regulatory pressures in North America and Europe, Gwenn Bézard, research director and co-founder of United States-based consultancy Aite Group LLC, tells CardLine Global. "What is surprising is that Visa is settling," he said Thursday, especially given that New Zealand has a relatively small economy compared with other countries the card brand serves. "If [Visa] is willing to [settle] there, why not do it in other countries?" Regulators in Europe already have taken antitrust action against Visa Europe and MasterCard Worldwide, mainly over cross-border interchange rates. MasterCard has appealed a ruling requiring it to lower its cross-border rates, while Visa earlier this year indicated it hopes to negotiate a settlement. Comment from European regulators was not immediately available Thursday. Meanwhile, pressure on lawmakers in such countries as the U.S. and the United Kingdom is running high against interchange rates and associated costs as consumers and merchants, hit hard by the global recession, complain about the expense of using and accepting cards. In fact, the immediate aftermath of the New Zealand deal saw the Merchants Payment Coalition, a U.S.-based group lobbying against what it considers high interchange rates for credit card transactions, call for more transparency and flexibility in card costs. Mallory Duncan, the coalition's president, says the New Zealand deal provides more evidence that card companies might be willing to negotiate on interchange rates. "The card companies are seeing the handwriting on the wall," he tells CardLine Global. No matter what happens outside New Zealand, "pressure [on interchange] is stepping up" around the world, Bézard says. "It's not going away."
