Justice Department Sues American Express, Settles With Visa & Mastercard

October 5th, 2010 - 8:36 pm ICT by Angela Kaye Mason  

The United States Justice Department has reached a settlement with credit card giants, ‘Visa’ and ‘Mastercard’ but has gone on with a suit against ‘American Express’. American Express is known for charging a great deal more in interchange fees than the other credit card companies do. They feel that they have the right to charge more from the retailers because those retailers get more business from American Express.

Visa and Mastercard, on the other hand, settled the anti-trust charges, which will allow merchants to give discounts to those retailers who use other types of credit cards. This will sometimes lower the interchange fees quite a bit. Mastercard stated that the deal did not “substantially change our business practices,” according to ‘Reuters’.

The three major credit card companies were sued by the US Justice Department for their terms, which remove any type of rewards or discounts to their customers, and for hidden fees which ended up with customers being overcharged.

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