In response to an EU antitrust probe, the two biggest payment networks in the world decided in 2019 to reduce inter-regional interchange costs, also known as multilateral interchange fees (MIFs), by an average of 40% for transactions performed in Europe using cards issued outside the EEA.

The European Commission (EC) said last week in a statement that although these agreements were set to expire in November of this year, the two companies had freely decided to keep the limitations in place "beyond November 2024."

According to the European Commission, until November 2029, the inter-regional interchange costs for debit and credit card transactions under these schemes would continue to be restricted for a further five years.

The Commission declares that the debit and credit card fee ceilings for card present (offline) transactions shall stay at 0.2% and 0.3%, respectively. In the meanwhile, "the caps will remain 1.15% for debit cards and 1.5% for credit cards for card not present (online) transactions."

Merchants would run the danger of having excessive interchange costs passed on to them through their Merchant Service Charges if there were no limitations, according to the EC.

As it wraps up its statement, the EC restates that the recent "voluntary undertakings" by Mastercard and Visa "do not prevent the Commission from opening proceedings or conducting investigations should the Commission obtain concrete evidence showing that the current caps would no longer be appropriate."