Hospitality joins the fight for card-fee compensation
without a doubt the fees to businesses for their card payments are way too high. It was sold to us that modern payments would not only be more convenient but cheaper, which is not turning out to be true!
Hundreds of small and medium sized hospitality businesses throughout the country have joined in a legal effort to obtain compensation from credit card companies who they claim have charged them unlawfully high fees for accepting card payments.
The case is being made by a group of Class Representatives and being put before the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) and revolves around the issue of whether Mastercard and VISA charged reasonable amounts by way of multilateral interchange fees (or MIFs).
The CAT was given the green light for this collective to take legal action to take place, which, given a favourable ruling, could pave the way for businesses throughout the country to reclaim as much as £4bn in annual losses.
“We welcome the opportunity to hold MasterCard and VISA to account for charging MIFs at an unlawfully high level and causing substantial loss to UK businesses, including many in the hospitality and catering sector, “remarked Jeremy Robinson, partner at Harcus Parker Ltd which is representing the Class Representatives. “Major businesses that accept commercial card payments are likely to have been significantly affected and could be entitled to large compensation. We also anticipate that many smaller sized catering businesses will be eligible for compensation under our claim”.
The claim, which has been endorsed by UK Hospitality, remains in process.
Anyone who feels that like business could be eligible for compensation has been encouraged to visit mercialcardclaim.co.uk
Card payments are not yet accepted on fruit machines, the government are still looking at charging the policy so gaming machines can move with the times. When this happens we will embrace them but fair charges should be imposed.
