MA MasterCard Incorporated

By Austen Hufford 

MasterCard Inc. was ordered to pay U.K. supermarket chain J Sainsbury PLC 68.6 million pounds ($90.8 million) because fees it passed on to the grocer were too high, a London judge ruled.

The lawsuit concerned interchange fees that are charged when credit or debit cards are used. The lawsuit alleged that the default fees set up by MasterCard were too high.

The judge agreed, writing that merchants have little options except to accept cards from all card issuers, leaving MasterCard with the power to set unilateral rates that are higher than they would otherwise be if MasterCard had negotiated.

The judge wrote that a merchant who considered the default rate too high would be left with "unattractive alternatives" such as complaining, refusing to accept cards and charging card users a surcharge.

A number of U.K. retailers have sued card issuers such as MasterCard with similar claims.

The judge ruled that credit-card transactions should have had a fee of 0.5%, rather than 0.9%, and debit-card transactions should have had a fee of 0.27%, rather than 0.36%, and calculated the damages based on the difference in rates.

Last month a U.S. federal appeals court panel threw out a $7.25 billion antitrust settlement between Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. and millions of retailers after determining that some of the merchants covered by the pact weren't adequately represented. That settlement involved the fees merchants must pay when customers use cards and the rules Visa and MasterCard impose as conditions for using their networks.

Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 14, 2016 11:39 ET (15:39 GMT)

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