Judgment of the Tribunal in relation to: (a) the Claimants’ application for summary judgment in respect of their claims that throughout the relevant claim periods the rules of Mastercard and Visa payment schemes in respect of commercial and consumer domestic MIFs, EEA MIFs and inter-regional MIFs infringed Art 101(1) of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union; and (b) Visa’s application for permission to amend its Defences served in the proceedings against it to add a contention as to the appropriate counterfactual which should apply in respect of the period after 9 December 2015.
In respect of (a), the Tribunal:
- Granted summary judgment against Visa and Mastercard as regards UK and Irish domestic and intra-EEA MIFs (and insofar as relevant, the Gibraltar and Malta domestic MIFs) to 8 December 2015.
- Refused summary judgment as regards the period after 9 December 2015 and as regards the inter-regional consumer MIFs, the MIFs for commercial cards and the Italian domestic MIFs.
In relation to (b), the Tribunal granted permission to amend its Defence to plead the post Interchange Fee Regulation counterfactual referred to as the “UIFM”.
The Tribunal further concluded that Visa had no real prospect of success in defending the claims based on the acquisition of Visa Europe by Visa Inc. or on the basis that the inter-regional MIF was set by Visa Inc..
