A proposed opt-out collective action seeking approximately EUR 800 million in damages has been filed against Visa and Mastercard at the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). The claim, brought on behalf of a proposed class of approximately 126,000 UK-based businesses, alleges that the two card schemes overcharged merchants for accepting online and other remote payments made with cards issued in the European Economic Area (EEA).
The proposed class representative is Ann Pope, a former Senior Director at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). She is represented by competition law firm Geradin Partners. The action covers all UK-based businesses that have accepted online payments from customers holding EEA-issued cards at any point since October 2020. Because it is structured as an opt-out claim, eligible businesses will be included automatically unless they choose to withdraw.
Post-Brexit fee increases at the centre of the claim
When a customer uses an EEA-issued card to make an online or remote purchase from a UK merchant, an inter-regional interchange fee applies. Visa and Mastercard set the default level for these fees. Before Brexit, they were subject to EU caps, which ceased to apply once the UK left the bloc. However, the UK remained part of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), and the cost of processing such transactions stayed substantially the same as it had been before Brexit.
According to findings by the UK Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), Visa increased its UK-EEA online transaction fees five-fold in October 2021, and Mastercard followed in April 2022. Fees rose from 0.2% to 1.15% for consumer debit cards and from 0.3% to 1.5% for consumer credit cards. The PSR concluded that the schemes were not subject to effective competitive constraints on the acquiring side of the network when they raised these fees.
The claim argues that Visa and Mastercard overcharged UK businesses, including by exploiting the removal of the EU caps. It builds on a separate case in which the CAT has already found inter-regional fees charged by both schemes to be unlawful. The claimant’s legal team also points to the PSR’s proposal for a price cap on these fees, which has not yet been implemented but remains under consideration.
Exposure for UK merchants selling into Europe
The EEA, which comprises the 27 EU member states plus Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, is collectively a central trading partner for the UK. In 2025, UK exports of goods and services to the EU were worth approximately EUR 440 billion, accounting for 41% of all UK exports. The EU represented 48% of UK goods exports and 37% of services exports.
For merchants selling to European customers, accepting card payments online is a basic condition of market access. The PSR found that Visa and Mastercard account for nine out of ten online transactions at UK businesses using EEA-issued cards, leaving merchants with limited alternatives to absorbing the associated costs.
According to the claimant, the action aims to recover amounts that UK businesses were wrongly required to pay on these transactions after Brexit. The case adds to existing legal and regulatory scrutiny of the schemes’ cross-border fee arrangements, with the CAT’s earlier ruling and the PSR’s pending cap proposal both bearing on the same category of fees.
