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Block is suing Mastercard and Visa over the interchange and other fees imposed by the duopoly on the Square payments platform.
As reported by Bloomberg, Block claims that Visa and Mastercard conspired to fix inflated “interchange” fees and maintain market power, according to a suit filed July 14 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Square, which charges users fees for payments passed over its platform, directly pays the interchange charges levied by the card schemes.
“The effect of these artificially inflated fees — assessed to and paid by Square — is higher retail prices paid by consumers economy-wide,” Block said in the suit. “As retail prices increase in response to inflated fees, consumers can afford less and thus purchase less, reducing output.”
Block has also complained about seperate charges applied by Visa and Mastercard that are determined by merchant locations and size, arguing that the fee is “highly complex, difficult to calculate, and unavoidable”.
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