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The UK payments regulator fined Barclays 8.4 million pounds ($10.26 million).
In a press release on Thursday (Dec 1), the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) said it had imposed the penalty in response to Barclays’ failure to comply with interchange fee regulation by not fully informing retailers about the costs of its card services.
“This meant that retailers could not easily understand the transaction fees associated with accepting certain types of card payments,” according to the release.
The penalty follows a PSR investigation which found that Barclays did not properly disclose to retailers the transaction fees associated with accepting different types of card payments between December 2015 and December 2018.
During this time, PSR says Barclays processed a third of all card transactions in the UK, affecting thousands of merchants.
The fine is the second crackdown on interchange fee regulation by the authority after four NatWest Group banks were fined 1.82 million pounds earlier this year for charging excessive fees on credit card transactions.
In addition to the financial penalties imposed, the PSR has ensured that the full information required under the regulation is now available to all retailers using Barclays’ card payment processing services.
“It is important that retailers and consumers get value for money on payment services — interchange fee regulations are an important part of ensuring this happens. Barclays’ failure to be transparent with retailers about the fees they pay for card services means retailers could have missed out on better deals,” PSR managing director Chris Hemsley said in a press release.
As the authority responsible for overseeing card schemes, the PSR is also investigating Visa and MasterCard over their fees in two separate probes.
One probe is looking at the scheme and processing fees while the other is looking at cross-border interchange fees.
Shortly after those reviews began, the UK Parliament’s Treasury Committee sent letters to Visa and MasterCard asking them to explain increases in cross-border interchange fees after the UK left the European Union.
In August, two US-based card companies responded by blaming fraud and increased competition for the fee increases.
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