Why Russian Parlament continue to put pressure on Visa and MasterCard?

After the State Duma and the FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service) raised the issue of non-compliance with international payment systems of the Russian legislation were announced the possible penalties for Visa and MasterCard.

According to FAS if Visa and MasterCard will be rebuked for violating the law on protection of competition, the amount of the fine will be up to $ 17 billion. Similar calculations were made on the basis of the total turnover of card payment systems in 2010.

A reasonable question – why such a huge amount, and who ever made these calculations?

It turned out that this is an approximate figure. All calculations are based on data from the Savings Bank in 2010. The fact that the share of Sberbank’s market plastic cards in Russia is 35% and, respectively, is the proportion of turnover is on the cards of the international payment systems. Based on these data, the amount was announced – to the total turnover on Visa cards in Russia in 2010 amounted to $ 236 billion, and for MasterCard in 186 billion dollars.

According to the Code of Administrative Offences fines for abuse of dominance to reach 2% of the turnover of the company, and if the companies were in cahoots – to 4% of turnover. That is for Visa penalty will be between 4.7 billion and 9.4 billion MasterCard «lucky” little more than the amount of the fine will be between 3.7 to 7.4 billion dollars.

The official version of this goal – to protect the rights of ordinary users of plastic cards shops and banks from excessive commissions international payment systems.

However, a number of independent Russian analysts maintained a very different opinion. And give interesting facts:

First, it is not accidental coincidence that the amount of fines in the $ 17 billion in a strange way equals the costs of a national payment system? Even more strange is the fact that the counts in this and in the other case did Savings!

Second, the word “about” refers to the total turnover of Visa and MasterCard in the Russian market at almost half a trillion dollars not only relevant, but clearly too high. Visa on its website published data according to which the turnover of its cards on 30.06.2010 amounted to 61.5 billion dollars. As you can see, the figure is far from obscheozvuchennoy.

Third of all charges FAS directed towards Visa and MasterCard do not find neither a confirmation. FAS argued that they receive a lot of complaints from companies about excessive charges a commission payment systems. But in fact, no such statement was made public. A main advantage of the FAS and the State Duma of the Russian Federation that Visa and MasterCard’s actual figures determined by the Commission totally absurd. Knowing the statistics on the official turnover of payment systems in Russia and the conditions under which Visa and MasterCard enter into agreements with local banks – count all the data can even schoolboy.

If FAS is successful and Visa and MasterCard will pay $ 17 billion, the consequences for ordinary users of plastic cards will be, to put it mildly, is not as rosy as it claimed the same representatives of the State Duma. Large companies such as Visa and MasterCard nor when, nor to accept the loss of 17 billion dollars, and who they will reimburse the loss is understandable.

Posted by Roman Mikhaelov