Alexander Lewis 
Dec 17, 2023
Apple, Visa, and Mastercard find themselves embroiled in a class-action lawsuit revolving around the Apple Card. Allegations have surfaced suggesting a collaboration among these companies to stifle competition within point-of-sale services.
The lawsuit, recently filed in a federal court in East St. Louis, Illinois, asserts that this collusion led to merchants bearing inflated fees for credit and debit transactions, as reported by Reuters.
Mirage Wine & Spirits, a beverage retailer, serves as the plaintiff in this case. According to their claims, Apple, along with Visa and Mastercard, engaged in an agreement that refrained from competitive practices in exchange for a portion of the transaction fees generated by purchases using Apple’s mobile wallet.
Describing these payments as significant ongoing inducements, Mirage estimates the value to be in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
The lawsuit aims to represent "all merchants in the United States that accepted Apple Pay at physical point-of-sale locations." Mirage alleges that due to this arrangement, Visa and Mastercard had no motivation to introduce their digital wallets or participate in third-party wallet applications. The result, according to the plaintiff, was a surge in merchant fees.
This legal action comes on the heels of a previous case where a US appeals court upheld a class action lawsuit involving 12 million retailers against Visa and Mastercard. These retailers accused the companies of unlawfully setting fees for credit and debit cards. Among the aggrieved parties were gas and oil firms, asserting financial harm after opting to accept credit card payments.
