The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday sued Visa for allegedly monopolizing the debit card market, which has led to higher prices.
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/24/visa-antitrust-debit-card-monopoly-lawsuit
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...DOJ Visa Prior Probe
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4723024-why-visa-is-a-buy-despite-doj-lawsuit
Plaid...would disrupt Visa's monopoly
On May 2, 2023, Visa filed a civil investigative demand. Visa disclosed that the DOJ sought additional documents and information about the company's U.S. debt business. Additionally, it wanted more details about Visa's competition with other payments and networks.
On January 12, 2021, Visa abandoned its plans to acquire Plaid Inc. in a merger deal worth $5.3 billion. The DOJ had filed a lawsuit to block the acquisition of the fintech app on November 5, 2020. It said that Plaid allowed developers to plug into the consumer's financial accounts. However, since it accessed data on behalf of 200 million customer bank accounts, it would disrupt Visa's monopoly. The DOJ alleged that Visa's CEO viewed the acquisition as an insurance policy that threatened the firm's all-important U.S. debit business.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4723024-why-visa-is-a-buy-despite-doj-lawsuit
SELL SELL SELL = G G G
...more than 60% of debit transactions in the country take place on Visa’s debit network.
Visa, in turn, is able to charge more than $7 billion in processing fees on those transactions, the department says.
“Visa also induces would-be competitors to become PARTNERS instead of entering the market as competitors by offering generous monetary incentives and threatening punitive additional fees,” the Justice Department said in a press release. “As the complaint alleges, Visa coopted the competition because it FEARED losing share, REVENUES, or being displaced by another debit network altogether.”