Payment Systems Regulator finds anticompetitive conduct in pre-paid card market

 

Payment Systems Regulator finds anticompetitive conduct in pre-paid card market

 

The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) published its decision finding that Mastercard, allpay, APS, PFS and Sulion breached the Chapter I prohibition of the Competition Act 1998 by engaging in anti-competitive market-sharing in the prepaid card services sector.

This is the first Competition Act infringement decision issued by the PSR since it obtained concurrent competition powers in April 2015.

The PSR found that the parties agreed not to target each other’s public sector clients during the currency of existing public sector clients until the contracts came up for tender and they exchanged customer information to facilitate this behaviour.

The conduct took place under the National Prepaid Cards Network (the Network), which was sponsored by Mastercard and organised by Sulion which acted as a facilitator.

The public interest focus of the decision is striking as the PSR found that the violations had as their object the restriction of competition in the supply of prepaid card services for welfare payments.

The PSR imposed fines amounting to about £33 million in total.

https://www.psr.org.uk/media/qk0a22tw/psr-final-infringement-decision-non-confidential-april-2022_.pdf