CHICAGO—Discover Financial Services is suing Visa, alleging that the card company has been using antitrust practices in its debit card business.
In a lawsuit in filed in federal court last week, Discover alleges that "in order to maintain its monopoly, Visa has undertaken a series of illegal actions that undermine competition — harming rival debit networks, merchants, acquirers, card issuers, and consumers," NACSonline reported.
Discover accuses Visa of pushing signature debit, despite the security advantages of PIN debit.
“Visa dominates the provision of signature debit network services, maintaining a market position based on charging higher fees for its services and earning higher profits. Permitting the superior PIN debit to predominate in the marketplace would cost Visa a lot of money. Accordingly, Visa has a long history of making sure that does not happen, including undertaking illegal behavior to fend off competitive threats to its debit network services monopoly,” the suit states.
Discover also claims Visa is offering economic incentives to merchants to choose the Visa network for transactions.
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