Three supermarkets have won their Court of Appeal cases against Mastercard and Visa.
Ruling in Sainsbury’s & Ors v Mastercard & Ors [2018] EWCA 1536 (Civ), the court held that the card operators had infringed EU competition law by imposing ‘default multilateral interchange fees’ (MIFs), and remitted all three cases back to the Competition Appeal Tribunal for reconsideration of what a fair fee would have been and how much compensation should be paid.
The supermarkets had argued that the MIFs—'multilateral interchange fees', paid by retailers when customers use a debit or credit card—were too high. The fees were capped by the EU in December 2015.