Visa and Mastercard face £5bn claim over UK card fees

Visa and Mastercard are staring down a potential £5bn group claim in the UK. The law firms Harcus Parker and Hausfeld have lodged an application at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, hoping to win the right to pursue compensation for companies they say were overcharged on customer card payments since October 2020.

At the heart of the fight are multilateral interchange fees — the charges Visa and Mastercard set, and which businesses pay through their banks every time someone pays by card. The claim argues that with so little competition in the market, merchants have been left at the card giants' mercy, paying inflated fees on debit, credit and prepaid cards. The case aims to claw back six years of those fees, plus interest on the losses.

Sources close to the claim put its value at roughly £5bn, based on how many businesses are alleged to have been overcharged between 2020 and 2026. It is being bankrolled by Bench Walk Advisors, a London firm launched in 2017 that makes its money backing lawsuits, and led by Stephen Allen, a British businessman and former travel executive who has been chasing Visa and Mastercard through a string of group actions since 2021.

If the application gets the green light, around 1m UK businesses, organisations and charities turning over less than £100m would be swept in automatically unless they opt out, with individual claims potentially worth several thousand pounds each. Bigger companies would have to opt in — and could be in line for tens of millions over the claim period.

Mastercard is not backing down. A spokesperson called the claim "speculative" and part of a "growing trend of opportunistic funder-backed litigation", insisting interchange plays a vital role in the UK payments ecosystem and keeps money moving quickly and securely. The company also linked the case to the government's proposed opt-out class action reforms, which went out for consultation this summer. Visa's line was shorter: interchange is a critical component of a secure digital payments ecosystem that benefits consumers, merchants and banks alike, a spokesperson said.

Don't expect a quick resolution. Such cases can grind on for years — Visa and Mastercard only last year agreed to pay a combined $167.5m to settle a US class action over ATM access fees that was first filed back in 2011.