Türkiye's competition watchdog launches investigation into Visa, Mastercard

Türkiye's Competition Authority announced on Friday that it had launched an investigation into major global card payment system firms Mastercard and Visa to determine if they prevented payment institutions from providing services to merchants abroad.

The Competition Board said in a statement that the investigation was launched in order to determine if Mastercard and Visa violated the competition rules "by means of complicating the operations of payment service providers offering international payment solutions by disallowing overseas businesses the use of the payment/POS (point of sale) infrastructure, which is provided by the banks operating under the scope of Banking Law no 5411 to other payment service providers."

The board said payment institutions operating in Türkiye can provide services to consumers who want to make payments to merchants located abroad through bilateral agreements they have made abroad.

It said that under these bilateral agreements, international payment transactions are localized and these transactions can be carried out without being subject to Mastercard or Visa's cross-border transaction fees.

"Preliminary findings from the on-site investigations conducted in this context showed that Mastercard and Visa were able to block the activities of payment institutions that entered into bilateral agreements through various methods, such as imposing sanctions on banks on the grounds that they violated the scheme rules they set.

"Accordingly, an investigation was launched into Mastercard and Visa, which operate in the global card payment systems market. The investigation will examine allegations that Mastercard and Visa prevented the use of card payment/POS infrastructure by merchants located abroad and excluded alternative payment solutions," it added.

The authority's investigation decisions do not imply that the undertakings under investigation violated the relevant law and are or will be sanctioned.