MasterCard face £14billion claim for ‘fixing excessive charges on cards used between 1992 and 2008’… and EVERYONE would get £300
Brit shoppers could be in for £300 windfall if landmark campaign succeeds, former Financial Ombudsman chief Walter Merricks predicts
THE personal finance guru leading a £14BILLION legal bid against MasterCard reckons the case could prove even worse than the PPI scandal.
Walter Merricks, the UK’s former chief financial ombudsman, says Brits could be set for a windfall of up to £300 each in the new year if his case against the payment giant is successful.
MasterCard applied a charge to every transaction made between 1992 and 2008 using one of its cards.
These were often passed onto shoppers through the price of everyday store items.
Now, Merricks - awarded a CBE in 2007 - wants to take the payment company to task over a decade and a half of what he labelled “excessive” charges.
He said: “This is potentially worse than PPI.
“Financial institutions are spotting ways to make more money from consumers. This was an invisible way of doing it.
“With PPI, people realised they had it.”
Britain’s biggest mis-selling scandal saw millions of Brits receive thousands of pounds in payment protection insurance premiums they were mis-sold by banks.
Financial regulators judged in 2011 that many had paid thousands for the insurance they never needed.
An explainer reads: “The proposed claim relies on a legal finding of the European Commission that MasterCard imposed unlawful fees on transactions processed through its network.
“These fees were paid by businesses for accepting payments made with a MasterCard credit or debit card in the period 1992 to 2008.
“More than half a million businesses in the UK, including major supermarkets, that accepted MasterCard cards in the relevant period, paid these unlawful fees, and it is alleged passed these on to consumers in higher retail prices.”
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368