The Hungarian Competition Office has launched
proceedings against MasterCard for alleged domination on the
interbank market.
MasterCard, which has a 75% market share in
Hungary, is being accused of setting interchange fees so high
as to squeeze out its competitors.
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Visa Europe, MasterCard main competitor in the
country, agreed to cap its fees at 0.20% following an antitrust
warning filed by the European Commission in 2008.
Both MasterCard and Visa Europe had already
been fined by the Hungarian Competition Authority the equivalent of
USD2.1 million in 2009 for colluding with local banks on credit
cards fees between 1996 and 2008, as reported by Bloomberg.
MasterCard paid the fine in the fourth quarter
of 2009, but denied any wrongdoing.
The company has recently been at the centre of
another dispute regarding interchange fees in Poland. In July 2012,
MasterCard refused to sign an agreement with the National Bank of
Poland to lower its interchange fees.
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By GlobalDataMasterCard confirmed it received a
request for information by the Hungarian Competition Authority. “We
fully intend to cooperate with the HCA and are currently preparing
our response. Yet we believe that MasterCard is the
preferred debit, credit and commercial brand for Hungarian
consumers, banks and merchants because it has constantly introduced
new, state of the art innovation to the Hungarian market,”
MasterCard said.
