Judge Throws Out Lawsuit Accusing Apple of Taking Bribes To Avoid Competing With Visa and Mastercard

A federal judge has dismissed an antitrust lawsuit that accused Apple, Visa and Mastercard of conspiring to suppress competition in the payments network market and inflate merchant transaction fees.

U.S. District Judge David Dugan in Illinois ruled that merchants failed to provide sufficient evidence supporting claims that Apple illegally declined to launch a competing payment network to rival Visa and Mastercard.

The lawsuit, filed by beverage retailer Mirage Wine & Spirits and other businesses representing thousands of merchants, alleged the payment networks paid Apple hundreds of millions of dollars annually to avoid competition. Dugan found the plaintiffs offered only "a slew of circumstantial allegations" but permitted them to amend their complaint.

Nobody can start these companies anymore, legally

[Anonymous Coward]

it's also important to note that unless Then Apple does something illegal they literally cannot do this anyway because it's illegal to create credit cards as a company without the charter and permission to do so and that is too expensive; it's not even available to smaller companies that want it.

It's impossible for a company to start their own credit card program; It's effectively been outlawed unless you have obscene amounts of cash, that would be tied up in a savings account as part of that process.

Apple

Re:

[registrations_suck]

Offering a credit card is not the same thing as operating a payment network.

As Buster Scruggs have said:

[ugen]

As Buster Scruggs said - "Can't No One Compel Another Man to Engage in Recreation", or, in this case, to engage in a new business. I mean, if Apple is not interested in running their own payment network - why should they?

Re:

[buss_error]

if Apple is not interested in running their own payment network - why should they?

If Apple started to create such a network and then accepted payment not to enter it, that may run afoul of Sarbanes Oxley for reporting and The Sherman Antitrust Act for colluding with the payment processors not to compete. You may recall that several pharma companies have had "a bit of a pother" over their very profitable drugs going off patent and the generic manufacturers that ... aren't making those drugs.... for a payment.

That there is very little true competition in payment processing is seemingly a b

Re:

[registrations_suck]

For any given scenario, whether Apple does or does not do something, people will bitch about it plenty.

Article is disingenuous

[rsilvergun]

It starts out by saying that the lawsuit is because Apple didn't start a competing payment network.

In the very next paragraph it clarifies that no that's not the case, the lawsuit says that Apple was paid not to start a competing payment Network.

Those are very very different things.

The judge is allowing more evidence. The thing that would have to be proved and it would be tough to prove this is that apple was considering launching a full payment Network and stopped when they realized they can make more money taking bribes from the credit card companies.

To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. It's also possible Apple didn't want to get into the payments market and just used the threat of doing it has leverage to get free money. But if that is the case I'm not sure it's legal.

Antitrust law is complicated as hell because it's designed to stop all sorts of terrible anti-competitive behavior.

No problem from my perspective

[registrations_suck]

Personally, I feel that:

1). Accepting money to enter a market should not be illegal.

2). Accepting money not to enter a market should not be illegal.

3). Accepting money to change your existing plans about a market, even if already in progress, should not be illegal.

Regardless of market.
Regardless of company.

I know I am in a minority.
I realize my feelings on the matter have no legal bearing.

It's just how it is.

Carry on.