MasterCard credit card must lower charges

The Office of Fair Trading has come down on credit-card operator MasterCard credit card for excessive charging.

MasterCard credit card is accused of exacting too high a fee from retailers for card transactions.

This charge is then passed onto customers by retailers seeking to raise margins.

A statement declared: "The OFT proposes to find that the current agreement . . . infringes Article 81 of the EC Treaty and the Chapter I prohibition of the Competition Act 1998."

Consultancy Mercer Oliver Wyman was quoted by the Reuters news agency as explaining that the fees in question provide a large part of the card issuers' profits: "That number is a big chunk of overall profit for them. It is going to get squeezed down but it is not going to disappear."

The OFT also announced that it would widen its investigation to cover MastCard's main rival Visa.